Well heres the story, I built my 1st motor with the help of a retired engine builder/machinist. Im a young guy and spent basically all the money I could save for 5 years on a bunch of go fast parts to build the 3rd motor for my 86 el camino. I am stubborn and do everything on my car (except the paint) and wanted to learn how to actually assemble a motor as I have swapped 2 before after heads/cam/tuned port upgrade. Well after completing the motor and finishing the break in period of 1000 miles (thought that should do) it died while getting a beating. I was cruising on the highway data logging in the quest for the perfect ecm chip and was climbing up to about 5800 rpms it just stopped running, no back fire, no thud, just nothing. After getting a tow home I found I had a no spark condition. I went through the ignition system and tested everything to find that I could turn the rotor on the dizzy by hand about a 1/4 turn (not good). Pulled the distributor and found 4 teeth were just gone and the remainders were razor sharp nubs.

**My questions are should I definitely change the cam/crank bearings? And what should I do to make sure this doesn't happen again? (break in method, distributor gear material, not use hi vol/hi pressure oil pump, incorrect cam button etc)

The two things Ive read would be to simply drain the oil and wipe out the pan, stick a magnet to the pan and do the break in all over again (i dont like this).
And the more interesting "solution" was to drain the oil and refill with kerosene and stick a magnet to the pan. Turn the crank by hand while spinning the oil pump shaft with a drill. Guy said the kerosene is thin enough to flush out small pieces.

Honestly Im pretty OCD and just want to tear the whole thing apart so I dont ruin the bottom end.

Well heres the motor:
350 010 casting bored .040 over
Eagle competition lightweight forged 4340 crank
Eagle comp lightweight esp h beam rods 6 inch
SRP forged 4032 pistons, moly rings
world sportsman 2 heads 72cc 2.02/160 stainless valves 1.437 dual Springs
clevite 77 bearings
comp cam hyd roller xr282hr camshaft
comp pro magnum full roller 1.6 rocker arms
comp pro magnum retro fit roller lifters
comp hardened push rods (custom length for geometry)
cast alum timing cover
comp dual roller timing chain
melling hi vol/hi pressure earl pump
7 3/4 fuildampr
TPIS miniram
accel 32lb injectors
bbk 58mm 1000 cfm throttle body
89 gm ecm 1227165 (6E mask) w/ howells harness
msd 6a, msd blaster ss coil, msd wires
msd pro billet dist. # 8366
700r4 stage 3 trans from bowtie overdrives
hooker 1 5/8 headers, wrapped & thermo tec coated
2 1/2 exhaust to borla super turbo mufflers

http://rides.webshots.com/album/540009351IsfscB

Ive learned so much from this forum and have never posted anything before, but I really need some help as I need to get my car back together, I'm miserable without it. My daily driver is so lame.

Any thoughts, suggestions, criticism is welcome. Sorry for the long post but wanted to give the whole picture. The link is to a webshots account I made while assembling the motor.

 

I have heard that using a high vol/high pressure pump can shear dizzy gears, how does your cam look? also did you use the correct cam gear distrib gear combo? roller cams used a softer gear where tappet cams used a harder gear

 

Cam gear looks ok, I havnt pulled it yet this happened about a week and a half ago. I think I should have used comps gear 12200, but I listened to my machinist who told me not to worry about it. Well I should have worried but he knows a lot more than me so I listened. I just want to build this 100% right this time. I'm thinking of swapping to comp cam 292XFIHR13.

 

just get the right dzzy gear this time.

 

The gear that was on that distributor should have been fine. More likely what happened is the distributor and cam gear alignment is a little off, in the direction of height. Has the block been decked? Heads shaved? Anything that would make the distributor sit too low can cause problems, the combination of a bunch of aftermarket parts may have even created a problem. Throwing a few shims in there or another gasket or both might fix the current issue.

As far as the remnants, they fell into the pan and the larger ones are likely sitting at the oil pump screen. The smaller ones probably didnt do much damage but if you have nothing better to do I guess you could pull the engine and redo the whole thing. Just doesnt sound like fun to me, and I've done the clean+flush as well as you can method and ran the engine for a while after no issues so far.

 

I checked the height by removing the existing gasket and while pushing the base of the distributor down and and making sure I could wiggle the shaft up and down a little bit. The block was decked by .005 to clean up the surface as someone had used a scotch brite pad previously and left a few low spots. Is there an accurate I can check cam end play and distributor height (how much should it be shimmed and)? How would I check the alignment (white lithium like shimming a rear end, couple rotations and pull it out to check pattern)? Also what was your clean+flush method? Thanks

 

To follow up:
after talking to comp my problem was a result of using a hydraulic roller cam which has a steel gear and a non melonized iron gear on the distributor. The fix is to use a composite gear (comp pn 12140 w/ .500 shaft for after market distributor). To check alignment use a little white lithium on the gear, rotate motor a few times, check pattern. Should be dead center on the dist gear with an even coat top to bottom. I'm going to pull and clean everything but the rotating assembly, but while the pan is off check a main and rod bearing. Replace cam, dist gear, oil pump and pickup. Hopefully this helps someone from having the same problem.

 

I cleaned what I could with gasoline, flushed the motor with some 0w oil. I took my best guess on the dist height, based upon how much the block and heads were cut and spaced up accordingly. Pattern now is in the middle although I am still getting a slight bit of wear.

When you're in there checking things, make sure the cam gear is ok as well. It should be, but take a look at it. Hope the Comp gear helps, but I kind of doubt it. I looked it up and the MSD gear is melonized, not to my surprise.

 

gotcha, I'll add a few shims to my parts list so I have them handy when I re assemble, thanks for your help, as for the gear, if it happens again I'll be catching a plane to personally beat them with the cam, no seriously they were actually really helpful and got back to me in less than 24hrs