distributor gear broke, why?

[Ford'sCapri]

my brother owns a 88 turbocoupe (5speed) and has broken the teeth off of TWO different distributors. the first time he replaced the distributor, the small shaft it drives for the oil pump along with adding a high volume oil pump too. the only mods are a "custom" boost controller(16-20 psi) and a open filter replacing the air box. why does this keep happening?

[mfpmax]

Its sort of a common problem, fortunately haven't experienced myself. Probably caused by the gear binding with the auxilary shaft in some way.
Also some have said the high volume pump isn't really required.

[Evil86lx]

Agree. Seems to be a common problem. Luckily for me I have not had this failure on any of my turbo fords.

I seem to remeber a thread on turboford discussing this and one of the conclusions was that the aftermarket replacement parts tolerances where way out of spec and causing this kind of failure.

I dont know how much truth there is to this but you may want to try another stock ford piece.

kyle

[Ford'sCapri]

well, the second distributor was out of the 2.3 that was in my 87LX and the shaft was out of a extra 2.3 turbo block he had sitting around. the high volume pump was because the cam was all chewed(yes the cam was swapped along with the head) up and he wanted some extra oil getting to the top of the engine.

[83rsturbo]

well if he has a slider cam thats going to happen.Go with a roller cam

[AT6svo]

One possible culprit that has been discussed has been the oil pump itself. Most people tend to think bigger is better, this is not always the case, specifically true with the oil pump. The factory 2.3t unit is high volume from the factory, the aftermarket ones exacerbate the problem.

The 2.3t's like just stock replacement oil pumps. The same theory also applies to the cap/rotor/plugs/wires, stockers do better than the aftermarket, as a general rule.

If dist gears are being eaten in conjunction with a stock oil pump, then there is obviously a different issue taking place.

[anthonydalrymple]

Interesting....
Did you guy's remove & inspect the cam's gear for the dist. drive? Usually you kill both the dist. gear & cam gear at the same time... If there was an defect in the cam's gear at all, even a minor chip; you will forever lunch dist. gears IMHO.....

[Chuck W]

It's not the "cam" gear, but the gear on the AUX shaft. Did you check that out after lunching the dist gears?

Also, any non-stock oil pump is a no-no on the 2.3Ts.

[anthonydalrymple]

It's not the "cam" gear, but the gear on the AUX shaft. Did you check that out after lunching the dist gears?

Also, any non-stock oil pump is a no-no on the 2.3Ts.

Tanks fer the correc-shion..... ;)

[svoman2300]

Did you drop the oil pan and clean out any debris? Sometimes samll pieces of the broken gear can get stuck in the oil pump causing it to break again.

[svopaul]

I have seen this happen on 1 completely stock original 2.3 Turbo but a lot more when people install high volume oil pumps. They don't need them and they do create more problems like this. If you aren't getting enough oil to the top of the engine with a stock replacement pump then you have other problems to deal with.

[cziglar]

i haven't expernced this on a 2.3, but i have had it happen on a 351. what turn out to be the problem in that case was the valve stem seals where coming apart and the parts where locking up the oil pump witch witch would get the distibitor gear and in that case the came

[86caprirs]

I had it happen on my 87 thunderbird TC twice. I replaced both parts with Ford parts not aftermarket.It was wierd it just would run fine then rough and then die.I never figured out just replaced parts and went from there.I have since sold the car but never found out what the problem was wich bothers me.

[Ford'sCapri]

the oil pan was dropped and cleaned out and the aux. shaft was replaced with a stock one from another 2.3T engine because the gear was eaten up on it too.

[pete]

Good info... I have seen this as well.