[Terry M. Hunt]

Rebuilding a nice used 1111078.dist for my ‘66 GTO. My ‘66 shop manual says “a permanent lubricant reservoir is built into the distributor housing to lubricate upper end of shaft. No periodic lubrication is required.” I dug the old grimy congealed lubricant out when disassembling/cleaning the dist. There was a thin plastic seal on top of the cavity where this lubricant was found and then a felt washer. What should I use to replace the lubricant in this cavity? Second question concerns the washer that separates the bottom of the dist. body from the top of the drive gear. Is there some spec for minimum/maximum clearance between this washer and the end of the dist body or between the washer and the top of the drive gear? Are replacement washers of varying thicknesses available to get this clearance back to spec if mine is off?

[Mike Davis]

Terry, I have done a few of the early Corvette distributors and the way most were doing it was to take some cotton gauze and pack the well, then fill with a 5-20 or a 10-30 oil. The GM grease was Delco Remy #1960954 that has been discontinued but does show up on Ebay from time to time. The last one that I did that had I used the small packs of ARP moly lube and it has been in service about 10 years.

Shims are available for the lower. Using points I would shim for .015 to .020 using a feeler gauge if you don't have a dial indicator and a vise. Aluminum distributor housing will grow slightly when warmed up.

[squidtone]

Terry,
I can comment on my experience with concocting a lubricant.
I took my distributor apart and like you dug out all the old dried up "lubricant". I used a thin wire to pick out the stuff in the feed hole. The shaft did show signs of galling so indeed, these do need maintenance. I polished the shaft with emery.
For new lubricant, I mixed up equal parts of 90 weight oil, cam break in lube, and grease. It was like loose pudding.

I jammed it into the cavities and put it together and I've got several thousand miles on it and it's fine so far.
Yea verily points!
Good luck!

[lust4speed]

All of the old distributors I pull apart have the dried out grease but I've found only about 1 in 10 that suffer from a galled shaft. So I don't really know whether there's that great of correlation between dried grease and wear. I wonder what the original function was of the grease? I have heard it was a low melting point grease, and as such would seem to liquify and drain out to the level of the small hole if it did liquify, but it really seems the grease didn't go anywhere and was rather inert.

For years I've been cutting up foam paint brushes into properly sized little strips and slipping the pieces down into the channels, and then filling the area up to the top with normal engine oil. Figure that excess drains down through the small hole into the shaft area, and whatever oil is drawn up into the distributor will be absorbed by the foam. Can't say if it does any good, but have pulled some longer term rebuilt distributors back out and looked at them and the foam was still doing good and was still soaked in oil. I also lube the shaft lightly in a thin Moly grease when putting the distributors back together and the grease was totally gone - so there is enough oil circulation in the normal distributor workings to flush away the added Moly grease.