Bummer you spent $$$ on a new distributor for nothing...
To check the drive gear endfloat, simply remove the distributor
and stick your finger down the hole and try to turn the gear.
You should be able to turn it at least a little bit, until
the slop in the cam-to-gear meshing is taken up. If it
doesn't budge you have no endfloat at all, and that is obviously
bad. If it seems really loose and sort of flops around,
maybe that is the source of your rattle.
But I doubt that something so deep in the engine would make
an audible rattle, unless it was actively destroying itself.
I bet your rattle will turn out to be something totally unrelated.
I once had a rattle only when I took my foot off the gas while
driving, at a certain RPM. It turned out to be the air filter
cover rattling against the air filter box. A small whack
with a 2x4 cured it.
Doug Braun
'72 Spit
At 09:16 AM 5/1/02 , you wrote:
>Well a new distributor didn't cure the rattle although
>the combination of the Mallory distributor, Pertronix
>Ignitor, and 8 mm spark plugwires seemed to make
>an improvement in performance. I'm thinking that I may
>have made a mistake in setting the endfloat when measuring
>for the gaskets for the pedestal. Is it possible to cause
>wear on the bottom of the pedestal by not having proper
>clearance? Could this wear now be allowing the oil pump
>gear to move slightly out of mesh when there is no load
>on it? The rattle always happens when the engine is shut
>off and sometimes after the engine is revved, but adding
>throttle stops it. Puzzled and frustrated!!
>Larry
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