Distributor Gear replacement

[bluesman31]

I am replacing the entire distributor assembly top to bottom (as much as is available repro). The gear at the very bottom of the distributor shaft (located inside the valve cover) that drives the distributor needs to be removed from the bushing assembly that holds it and that bushing is reused.

There is a .125 solid steel pin that holds the gear assembly together, and I ground off the peened end and removed it with a punch.

Can anyone tell me if they have done this before and if they replaced this pin with another solid pin or did they use a roll pin? I bought a steel pin at the hardware store and the dang thing is so hard I cannot peen it. It is making a mess of my punches and anvil!

[Joe K]

I have done both. Usually the sleeve that one can buy to replace and hold the gear in place in its housing comes with a pin.

You could soften the pin up by heating it to cherry red and then dropping it into a box of woodstove ashes. A bernz-O-matic torch (I'm showing my age here) could probably achieve enough heat to do this on a small object like this.

Still, the rollpin will work.

Joe K

[James Rogers]

I always use a 1/8" mild steel welding rod. Just cut a 1" length and clamp the excess in a vice so you can peen one end then cut it leaving about 1/8" and peen it while holding the already peened end to the vice.

[Craig Lewis]

Something I've seen a few times is after installing a roll pin, a "next size smaller" roll pin can be driven inside the centre of the first to lock it more securely.

[CarlG]

I used a .125 Roll Pin to replace the 8d nail that was in there before I took it apart

[Rowdy]

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I thought I was the only one that found nails substituted for pins in these old cars. Seems to have been a common repair. Rod

[1931 flamingo]

"They" used what was available.
Paul in CT

[Bruce Lancaster]

Well, of COURSE nails! That 72857-S pin cost .05 per dozen in 1932. That would be a whole box of nails, and then you'd have the rest of the nails to fix the outhouse!

My experience with s similar but larger hard pin from Ford, a bigger version used to pin a coupler between driveshaft and pinion on a V8: I too thought the blasted thing (an original part) was too hard to work, and I was an impoverished teenager with no access to stuff like a torch. I eventually found that a heavy hit with a center punch made a tiny divot, and I accepted that as encouragement. I set the thing up on an improvised anvil (a broken banjo housing) and started to tap it fairly gently with a heavy hammer. It slowly began to mushroom, and I found that I could shape the head as it developed by tilting and moving around the hammer. After quite a few whacks I actually had a nicely shaped domed mushroom, tight and without any cracks or separating chunks.