[Jmark]

I just wanted to post this incase anyone else out there needed the info.

In my sons 400 that we just built, the machine shop told us, along with just about everyone else we talked to and from articles we read, that we needed to run the bronze distributor gear with the Comp Cams hyd. roller cam.
We were also told that the bronze gear will need to be changed every 10k miles. OR we could spend $100 on the new composite plastic dist gear and never have to change it.

We took it as the truth and on Saturday we got close to getting everything buttoned up and ready to fire. A friend had a bronze gear and we miked the inside diameter and found that the dist shaft on the Accel dist was smaller than stock. Apparently the "Blueprint Accel" HEI dist is a reman unit, and if needed, they turn down the shaft and use bigger bushings and then install a smaller bore gear.

Well, being somewhat budget minded and after seeing over $5000 go into this engine, I decided to ck the Comp Cams web site on the gear situation. I just could not bring myself to spend more on one stinking plastic gear than I spent on my Crane cam and lifter kit that went into my 350.

I called Comp cams this morning and spoke to Matt at the cam help line and asked about the bronze gear thing. He said that on almost ALL of their over the counter hyd roller cams, you do NOT need any special distributor gear! The bronze or plastic gears are needed ONLY on the special heat treated steel billet high teck wizz bang high dollar roller cams. His determining question was "is there an "8" at the end of the part number, which there was. According to Comp, if the part number has the "- 8" at the end, you do NOT need any special dist gear.

Hopes this help someone save a hundred bucks on their next rebuild.

Mark