Cannonfodder

XJ has good spark at the wire from the coil, but not the spark plut wires going to the plugs. Ok, drop in a new distributor. My old one was just a year old. Anyways, it ran for 2 minutes and died again. Took new distributor back out, and the splines are already rounded. I have 2 questions for this. Could this simply be my camshaft splines are worn enough it's jumping teeth? Or- Timing chain has too much slop?

CCKen

What did the splines look like on the one year old distributor you removed?

Cannonfodder

They looked the same as my brand new one. The 90*edge is rounded over. The more I think about it, the more it looks like it's close enough to the edge to jump teeth per say. I guess the metals used on the distributor are not much softer than that of the camshaft.

CCKen

The distributor gear metal is supposed to be softer than the cam gear so the distributor gear will wear out before the cam. But not that soft.


Is there any record that a high volume oil pump was installed?


Pull the distributor and examine the cam gear thru the distributor mount hole.

Cannonfodder

Thanks for the reply - I don't know about the oil pump being other than stock. I doubt it, was a stock Jeep when I got it, and the folks I got it from didn't do much beyond changing the oil. I will borrow a borescope and check out the camshaft splines.