You can’t win a drag race if you can’t make it to the staging lanes, so doing everything you can to prevent equipment problems is important. One of the worst issues to troubleshoot at the track can be anything related to the ignition, so finding these gremlins before they attack is a good idea.

A distributor gear failure on any Chevrolet engine is going to do significant damage, but, if you check for excessive distributor gear wear as part of your maintenance program you can prevent this. The two main culprits of distributor gears wearing excessively or failing can be traced to the distributor bottoming out on the oil pump, or the cam moving too much while the engine is running; this is known as “cam walk”.

Performance Distributors does a great job explaining exactly what a distributor bottoming out on the oil pump is and what it means when a distributor is damaged by cam walk. The company goes beyond just telling you what these conditions are, it also tells you how to solve the problems, too.

When checking to see if your distributor has bottomed out on the oil pump you need to check for up and down movement in the shaft of the distributor; a lack of this movement is a telltale sign the distributor is bottomed out on the oil pump and the situation needs to be addressed. You can learn how to properly check for this issue along with how to remedy it right here on the Performance Distributors website.