distributor leak

[obijuan]

i noticed the other day that my dist was leaking and i pulled it out to put a rubber o-ring and fix the problem, then i found out it was four teeth off and all the plug wires were wrong and found another leak from a bracket bolt. so i put everything back together the way its supposed to be but it still leaks.

is a rubber ring acceptable or should i get the felpro gasket and do i use RTV?

thanks again
obijuan

 

[Hogback Fabrication]

The position of the rotor (teeth being off by 4 teeth like you said) should have no adverse effects as long as the plug wires were hooked up correctly for that setup and the timing was right. I have seen some distributors that have a round shaped gasket that went under the distributor, so that might be one option to explore. RTV would probably work as well as long as you set the timing before the RTV sets up (the gasket is probably a better option). Whatever you can do to keep it from leaking while still having everything working right should be fine

 

[HarryH3]

There's supposed to be a paper gasket under the distributor. You don't want to mess with using alternatives, as anything that changes the height of the distributor will also affect how the distributor drive gear meshes with the gear on the camshaft. Get those two out of alighment and you can greatly shorten the life of those gears. The correct gasket shoud only cost a buck or so at the parts store.

 

[obijuan]

yeah the truck ran fine and everything but the gears were only in contact for about a half inch and the dist was really high causing a leak .

 

[ntsqd]

There's supposed to be a paper gasket under the distributor. You don't want to mess with using alternatives, as anything that changes the height of the distributor will also affect how the distributor drive gear meshes with the gear on the camshaft. Get those two out of alighment and you can greatly shorten the life of those gears. The correct gasket shoud only cost a buck or so at the parts store.

Note that those two high spots on the dizzy body need to be in the right place as well. For what ever reason the section btwn the spots is in the oil system. The MSD dizzys actually have o-rings there.