Thread: Gotta Model A in the shop

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Well, turns out that we had much deeper problems than a few electrical issues. The first thing I found was that the distributor wasn't even turning. The shaft had seized in the distributor body and the lower distributor shaft had twisted off down in the engine. I also found the cam drive gear had lost most of several teeth. The gears are fiber and are known to have chipping issues.





When I pulled the timing cover, I found that the cam thrust plunger had seized in the cover, welded itself to the cover and then broke off the head of the plunger. The oil hole for the plunger was plugged, which no doubt caused this carnage. Judging by the wear in the timing cover where the cam had been riding, it looks like this has been broken for quite awhile. Luckily the cam doesn't seem to have been hurt too bad.



I've had the large drain cover on the oil pan off before and didn't find any chunks of metal, so I'm thinking the pan may have been removed and cleaned sometime in the past. There's no way a piece of metal as big as the plunger head could have gone through the oil pump.

Oh well, parts are on order and, hopefully, I should have it running sometime next week.