So I got bit this weekend by this. Racing two classes, was down to 8 in one and 5 in the other.

I left the line, and just before the shift, sounds like all hell breaks loose and the engine shuts off. I thought I had blown up the motor. Turn it over and no weird noises and cranks fine, I am now thinking I sheared the pin on my distributor gear.

Get back to my pits to find that the screws had backed out on the rotor had back out and the rotor tab had got bent over.

So I am out of no box, i get it fixed so i think and make the next round of box and win, going dead in with it popping.

So I dial up thinking maybe it just loaded up the plugs a bit. I have on the tree, car popping again, runs 6 numbers off.

So looking at things more, reason it was still popping was because when the rotor hit, it broke the lock out for the advance and move the distributor.

It started and idle fine, but as soon as it got to the higher rpms it went to popping. Hopefully it didn't hurt anything else.

I have an msd pro billet distributor, probably will put some loctite on the screws this time or check it pretty regularly.

So I welded up the advance, and put a new distributor gear on there since it looked a little worn. I will reindex and go from there.


Learn from me, check that regularly.

I have had them exit the cap at least partially. I got rid of distributors all together.

Mark, That's a great idea, is that just RTV?

quote:

Originally posted by banjo:
Mark, That's a great idea, is that just RTV?

Yes

I tighten mine way tight but after seeing this I'll dab some rtv on them. Thanks for sharing!

The piece up underneath comes loose to......

How about some Loctite? Take care. Tom Worthington

Anyone suffer an engine damage as a result of this happening?

And for the 5 or so guys out there running Fords lol...make sure the tab on the rotor is good. I had one "strip" for lack of a better term once, and the rotor slipped on the shaft with similar results to what Banjo described. We like to have never figured it out...and it was a brand new replacement rotor from MSD.

Bill I had something come lose inside and jam into pickup in distributor causing it to spin out of phase of crank trigger and motor popped then quit. I found the issue and clean all the broken lives out of distributor then rephased it and kept on racing. Never hurt a thing.

Had a MSD cap adapt (the big cap) pop completely off the distributor for no reason. Shut the car off mid run. Never figured out why, just swapped to the larger bolt down cap that you see on the top fuel cars. Its a really nice piece and same price as the cap adapt kits, but the cap and adapter piece is all bolted down tight with screws.

I lost my 383 SBC to this same thing. Broke two main caps. I now lock tight and RTV them in. Poor design from MSD.

I fixed mine after finding the issue so I thought. Next week out it broke the oil pump off and put the oil pump drive shaft through the bottom of the pan after my burnout...

I had the pickup suck up a 3/8 hex lock nut from the work bench once. didn't notice it. Got jammed between the reluctor and pickup while running. Engine popped & died. Replaced the pickup, reluctor looked fine but later found out that it wasn't. Never could get it to run properly and scratched my head on that one for a while.