[aogmitch]

Went for a short jaunt last Saturday. Car was running good, then all of a sudden, died. Would crank, but would not fire. Lost spark. I trailered it home, as I was only about two miles away. The prior owner removed the points and installed a Pertronix kit.
I thought it may have died, so I removed it along with the tone ring. Discovered one of the magnets was gone., so went ahead and ordered a new kit. One other peculiar thing I noticed, when playing with the dist, was that I could turn it ony way and the advance weights would kick out. Let go back to a neutral state, and twist it the other direction, and it would pop and move, like hanging up. Its been many years since I messed with a Pontiac distributor, and did not recall them acting that way.
Well, new Pertronix showed up last night, and installed it. There was no gap between the tone ring and the pick up. There also was no instructions in the kit. I knew it wasn’t right. This morning, I found some instructions online ( a good you tube vid), and learned I needed to remove the distributer and shim the gear for a proper gap.
Well, I pulled it this afternoon and found the real issue. It has a bronze gear installed and the teeth are gone! My best guess is that there has not been much more than 5k on the motor since it was rebuilt some years ago.
Motor has a flat tappet Comp Cam in it. Why the bronze gear? Would a steel gear be better?

[tom s]

Just put a stock gear on it and change the filter and oil.Tom

[60sstuff]

I’ve always seen a Steel drive gear on a stock GTO distributor.

A bronze or brass gear is a soft metal ..... not good.

Wonder where all those gear teeth went

Good luck.

[Geoff]

The stock gear is cast iron, not steel.

It sounds like the engine might have had a roller cam at one stage, hence the bronze dist gear.

So all you need now is a stock dist gear.

[aogmitch]

I did order up a new stock one yesterday. Realized now that the exra movement I was getting was the gear jumping another tooth.