Replaced my 305 roller, with a 350 non roller.

Can I use the 305 Distributor with the gear made for a roller cam.... without causing damage to my new non roller cam/s drive gear?

I know I can't use an old style, on a roller....

but I have heard that the roller style will work on both....

 

i'd like to know the answer to this question also. anyone?

 

i dont know for sure, but i was told that the roller gear is stronger than the non-roller and that eventually it could eat the cam gear.i just finished the same exact swap and im using an older style distributor from a '91 vette.

 

Good mechanic friend of mine says:

"The roller cam is hardened steel, so they use a soft cam gear. Aftermarket usually uses bronze, and sometimes even plastic, and they need to be replaced fairly often.

Gm however used a different metal(think its melanized steel) anyway, the gm roller distributor gear should work on any cam with no problems.. Some roller cam manufacturers now make the cam out of two different metals. This way the lobes are billet and the gear is cast. Lots of different things out there. Anyway you should be safe."

I couldn't get my '85 TPI distributor to give me spark on my 87 setup.

 

That should be a completely separate situation. The Corvettes ran the same distributer that your 85 has right up to 91.

 

The dizzy ran fine on my '85.... I even tried a new coil... nothing. I was thinking it had something to do with the ECM not liking that kind of ICM but I don't know.

 

Nope. The ECM doesn't care what style distributer you're running. The same ECM was used on the 86 f-body (which used the same distibuter as the 85 f-body) as the 87, which used the small cap.

Maybe you had a problem with that specific distributer, but in general, small cap vs. large cap makes no difference.