> All 25D4's have broken mounting rings. I think they came from the
> factory like that... :-)
>
> It's because of the stupid mechanical design used to hold them in
> place (look at the "clamp" that grabs that ring some time, and them imagine
> what happens the first time some teenager at a dealer/whatever tightens it
> down during a tuneup "to make sure it doesn't slip".)
About right. Or even 20 to 30 years of well-meaning tuneups by people
who never looked at the bottom of the distributor.
> I've never actually seen any real problems due to the broken ring.
> It may make it a bit harder to get it tight, but I never had a problem.
I *have*. That's why I want to fix it. Specifically, the distributor
wouldn't keep its timing, and eventually popped completely out of the
block, between turn 2 and turn 3 at Sears Point Raceway, to be specific.
If it weren't for this, I'd probably stick it back in and hope for the
best... It probably wouldn't happen on the street, but when you're
running the motor to 7000 RPM several times every two minutes, the
loading on the distributor shaft gets pretty high. Plus we were
constantly redialing the timing that weekend, and wondered why the
timing was slipping so much. So though the distributor I was planning
to use was a different unit from the one that caused me so much grief
at the track, it's got the same problems and I can't see putting it
into the motor that quit on me once because the distributor broke.
Racing only improves the breed if you change the things that break...
--Scott
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