Reply to "Dreaded distributor Pin"

You are going to get all sorts of opinions on why they break.

I'm not claiming to be the authority on this issue. Just sharing my experiences.

I have never broken a pin in any distributor that I have run. That's 40 years now.

I do not run stock oil pumps. I run high volume pumps. I do not run stock oil pump drive shafts.

I run chrome molly ones.

I have never run a rebuilt distributor. Always new ones.

I have broken an Accell. Trash canned a Mallory Unilite. Found a home with the Ford Duraspark distributors.

My personal feeling is that the pin failure is associated with a rebuilt distributor. One where the drive gear is removed. You need to remove the pins to do that.

Either the roll pins are not intended to be reused in reassembling the distributor OR other roll pins are installed that do not have the same shear strength as the stock Ford roll pins.

That seems to be the most likely scenario?

There has been a lot of discussion here about this before.

I run other Ford engines as well. 302/347. 427. 428. I have never even heard of an issue with distributors in the other engines. Only the 351c.

I mention all of this because according to some, I should have broken a pin by now. The additional load placed on the gear by the HV oil pump, the lack of flexing in the chrome molly drive shaft are both major players in the pin failure according to others.

For the last 7 years have run the Ford Motorsport (now Ford Racing) version of the Ford Duraspark II distributor, in my Pantera. It better not break.

As of yet, none broken. My opinion as a result, those are not the determining factors in the pin failure. There is something else causing it.

Smucks re-assembling them maybe? I think highly likely?

Was your distributor re-built lately?