I have searched for this and found some people saying yes and some saying no. Question- Going from a stock flat tappet TBI motor to a stock 96 vortec motor, do I need to change the distributor gear. Can anybody answer this for sure ?

older gears will get chewed up unless they are hardened, I guess. I'll find out myself if I've got a hardened gear or not here shortly I suppose...

no need to worry, your stock gear will work just fine. the part number for your current dist gear is the same as mine. i have been running an lt4 cam for 4 years without any problems. in fact i had the dist out of the car this past weekend and it looked fine.

The stock gear is fine unless you change to a non stock vortec cam, billet ect.

Great, thanks. One less thing to worry about.