[68bird400HO]

I am going through my original 455 points distributor. The upper bushing has an area around it that you pack with grease. What grease should be used in there? Is a high temp wheel bearing grease good for that?

[rememberfireball#22]

Check with SunTuned. He is on this forum and will be glad to help.

[Sun Tuned]

No dont use high temp disc brake wheel bearing grease its melting point is too high. No synthetic grease either. Just a good black grease is fine, with moly is better. It can be wheel bearing grease but most are specified for use with disc brake use so the temp threshold is higher and so it won't work right.

Be sure you run a wire into and be sure the two holes in the side of the top bushing are freely unobstructed before you repack... biggest problem with a repack is that little item there.

[lust4speed]

Sun Tuned, looks like a great time to ask another question about the top "reservoir". Some distributors I have cleaned up definitely have grease in the area, and it looks like it might never have done much good. Other distributors seem to have a felt packing in this area and look like they did more good by holding and releasing oil.

And as long as I'm on a roll, do you sell the fragile plastic lid that seals off this area?

[My442]

GM used to make a special grease for distributors, starters, and alternators.

I just scored a tub of it on e-Bay for $1.99.......

[Half-Inch Stud]

I use the black moly grease from a Ford/Lincoln 'tub';
forms a liquid puddle in the tub, so it can be pretty loose.

Details per Post#3.

[Sun Tuned]

Curiously GM used to sell a "distributor shaft and starter grease" Greyish black looking grease with green oil wicked up in the top of the jar if setting for long time. i suspect that was some Kendall Refining derivitive. Good stuff. Unfortunately long discontinued as of 4 years or so ago. Glad I bought some before that.

Had a guy give me some once and i suspect it was not the same stuff, looked way different from what i have and we've been buying it for years back into the early 60's, my dad did.

As HIS would say..."Methinks somebody used or switched the good stuff for something else to refill container and create warm fuzzy feeling for someone else later as a result of instant gratification due to presence of full said container." I did something with the grease on the kids go karts or something, I kept the jar it was rather patriotic looking in color.

Historically GM used about 6 different "packings' for the dist, all are basically the same with a somewhat true gel type grease used in the later years from say 1990 on up till they farmed that item out also. Most you will encounter will be of a sawdust like packing, worked very well when new, eventually it dried out after years of use and simply needed re wetting with some good thick grade of oil and was good as new again. Problem was/is no one thought about it because most of the distributor was considered an item not needing periodic service outside of points , pickup coil .etc.

If the packing is looking pretty well filled around the 5 cavity well, then look down into the top bushing find the oil holes, there should be 2 but usually only one can be seen cause assy workers didnt line up the 2 holes where they would not be covered up by one of the cavity lugs in the housing. No big deal.... what is a big deal is verifying the holes are not jammed solid. From the inside run a wire into the hole and clean out the hole. Better yet take a small pocket screwdriver and carefully dip the packing from the cavity adjacent from the bushing hole and visually see light passing through hole. Put packing back in and take some ( I use Nitro 70 Kendall racing oil for this) or some 80-90 gear oil and wet packing down on top and reinstall the plastic seal, that is if you didnt break it into 5000 pieces.

Now would be a good time to talk about getting that grease seal out with out rendering it useless. They will have about a 40 percent attrition rate. Depends entirely on how much heat the housing has encountered in a former life. Pontiacs seem to be the worst as i believe that this is due to how far back and down in a hole pinned against the firewall the pontiac dist is. Grease seals on them seem to fare far less than other makes.

Put the dist in a vise and remove all top stuff down to the bushing and seal. Take a sharp pick, scratch awl, or an icepick and catch the top inside lip of the seal and attempt to walk it out of the housing in a circular motion around from the bushing if nothing else is available then use a small pocket screwdriver. Go slowly and you'll likely get it without breaking it, if you do break it, and you might anyway, we have 3 options, 1 of which is dwindling fast.

Option 1. call me, I have new seals but they have been discontinued by Gm for 2 years now, and I have tried in vain to buy up all that were left, so we'd have plenty. No deal.
Some friend at a BIG Chevy dealer here told me GM sold ALL obsolete inventory to a place called Vintage parts 2 years ago. Call them he said. They got em. Cool! I said.

Phone conversation deteriorated rapidly....
Me: can u check a GM number 4 me?
parts dude: sure what is it?
Me: whatever number was.
Him: how many you need??
Me: well not sure how many you got and depending on price i might buy all of them, but I'll say 200.
Him: well I've only got 109, but you can have them if u want them.
Me: o.k. all we can get is all you got then. Whats our cost on them???
Him: Looks like with shop discount total is..... $1226.25.
Me: ?????????????
Me: Did i hear that right?
Him: If you want some thats what they said we charge for them whether you want 1 or 100.You just thought you wanted all of them didn't you?
Me: You say you only got 109?
Him:yep.
Me: I'm gonna make you a racetrack deal then.
Him: Whats that?
Me: you wanna buy about 900 of these things for the today bargain of 5.00 each??
Him: you got 900 and you want 200 more?!?!?! Why???
Me; I dont wanna run out. Hey man, if you guys need to buy some when you run out lemme know I was just wanting to make sure i didnt run out.
Him: Good day sir!

Option 2: reuse the old one if not broke.

Option 3: fill well with packing/grease then put a piece of felt over the top of the grease and add just a touch of oil to "glue" felt to grease and reassemble.

I'm trying to find a supplier for these grease seals, making some headway. When I bought the last 500 from Delco they were 1.03 each. Before that they were .67 cents each. The difference in time was a year between the two. I knew it was coming.

Now GM no longer makes housings. They get them from ProForm which is where the GMPP crate motor dists are from, they dont even build the Chevy dists anymore. I'm told the offshore dists dont use the seal like the original GM anymore. That makes sense as they dont put grease in the well anyway so I guess thats just one more part they dont have to pay for.

But the real question is... Who does pay for that savings????

Thats right .... you.

[68bird400HO]

Dang! When I pulled the plastic seal off, I saw what looked like dried up black grease in there. I dug all of it out and it has the consistency of sawdust like Sun Tuned mentioned. Should I just clean out the holes and repack and rewet this stuff or just go get some black moly grease?

If I use the moly grease, how often would I need to check it or refill it?

[Sun Tuned]

Yes Mick,
I do but and am limiting quantities very sternly until I resolve a satisfactory replacement for them. I know the original supplier for them now, and am working on a supply.

Curiously enough the gear and shaft lube they sold in the plastic jars was not what they used when they switched to using grease in the housings. Best I can figure, somebody goofed that one. The grease filled ones I've seen and, I keep small glass bottles with samples inside (I know anal huh??), have had 2 different types of grease. 1 was a caramel color and thats about what it looked like.. was cold caramel. The second was a dark reddish brown color and i believe that was a type of variant on the old fiber wheel bearing grease used on the wheel bearings in the 50's and earlier cars that had rawhide wheel bearing seals. It was very thick and was a barium sulfide compound. I do not believe that grease is around anymore ( worked good but caused liver problems they said) and I think it was last used in the construction and mining industry in the late 80's. I know I bought some from Kendall a number of years back...B524. Super thick when cold and was why they used it for very slow moving earth equipment. Stayed put for sure it did.

I think the caramel color stuff was too high temp for what they needed and what i had was as a hotplate showed too high really for what they needed, and why you saw it might not have worked very well. Hard to get low temp grease these days most are all high temp.

The reason the caramel stuff worked, even if marginally, was that eventually the shaft and steel jacketed top bushing will get hot enough to approach the melting point of the grease installed. It will wick base oil if hot enough. The problem is that number( melting degrees) is just barely higher than the number required to start flaking and burnishing of the bushing. Thats the problem I have personally with the high temp grease it wont flow early enough. You can make it flow.... put a cutting torch on it and she'll go real fast but thats not the point.

The real early dist used a cotton wick and had oilers on the outside of the housings that were to be periodically oiled manually every 3000 miles. Then they got rid of those and went to the packed "cavity well" dist, which had actual sawdust in them that was oiled with heavy gear oil. Believe it or not those worked pretty damn good especially when combined with the iron housings which in my opinion made for the best deal going.

[Sun Tuned]

Hah! You guys caught me when there's nothing in my shop and I got the kids at home today watching old movies.

Long winded answers are at the taking today.

Grease is fine. Go to Sears and go to the lawn and garden dept and get some of that black grease they sell in the little tubes its low temp, I'm pretty sure ,a friend of mine in the dist business told me.

Man, Now for the fun....

Pay attention, I'm going to give everyone a early Christmas present.

If you decide to use grease, we have a very real problem. How to get it in those 5 little cavities. Hmmmm.

I'll tell you right now, I don't care how skilled you think you might be, You may have piloted a mission to the moon and back, but do not think you will successfully pack that 5 cavity well properly with a q-tip or a pocket screwdriver like I saw in a mag once. I will offer some known info here as I tried this once.

You will get an airlock in a cavity, precluding you from getting anymore in that cavity.

You will after that try the next cavity, resulting in the same deal as before causing you to curse profusely and ultimately that will end up with you trying another cavity (#3), just to prove you are not going to be whipped by this most basic of tasks. You will curse some more and probably me too for even putting the idea in your head to jack with this stuff in the first place. About the time you get 4 and 5 covered in grease you will now note that you have made 3 trips to the parts house for a case of grease each trip and at least as many trips to the store for multiple rolls of paper towels to deal with the mess that ensued. And before long you'll be cussing the Bounty paper towel guy, and maybe Mr. Whipple too. You'll look up and find you have covered the dist with grease, the dog, both cats , the nosey Parker neighbor, the lady next door , the shop floor and whatever else that got in the way during the 4 hours you have been playing with this mess. When you get done you will have 1/4 of the amount of lube in those 5 cavities of the housing that you would have had if you had removed 4 of the 5 cavities of grease that was originally in there to start with and thrown those 4 in the trash.

DO YOURSELF A FAVOR......

GO BUY A GREASE NEEDLE!!!!

Either the needle and little zerk that screws into the end , or the little grease gun kit, you'll find a use for it later in your life I assure you.

Now you can inject the grease in there and fully fill all what needs to be filled with Zero mess.

There you have it.....
Free Tip of the Day.

[Region Warrior]

What do you think about Cam2 NLGI lithium chassis grease? The red stuff.
Know its high temp/high pressure, but seems to work fine for me.
Only put on about 500 miles a year if that.

[Schurkey]

I just use plain ol' white "engine assembly" grease. Haven't done a lot of distributors, I don't have long-term useage reports. Thin-bodied, flows easily. So far...so good.

[zeebo]

all the original gm points distributors i have seen had a small foam wick attached to a piece of white plastic which as the dist rotated, the wick lubed the cam. of course, being 40 yrs old, the wick turned to goo and is gone, leaving the little piece of plastic it was stretched over....and to my knowledge no one makes this......wow.....

[Steve Hoog]

GM's grease is red; I have a tub as well thanks to Wankers I think it was.

[Steve Hoog]

I have both GM plastic pieces and the felt.

If you can't find them and need them I can do it mail probably.

[Old Tin Indian]

in 1970 i started working for a mechanic who was an independent garage owner.
he was an old well respected WW2 Navy airplane mechanic.
he had an exclusive older clientele as customers that drove mostly GM cars.
part of this man's major tune-up at the time was pulling and rebuilding the distributor. the bushings and the shaft were a major concern to him.
the grease he used was Delco Gear & Shaft Lube. Part #1960954.
it was a big 13 oz red, white and blue tube. the reason i know this is that i have one
tube left. the grease was black. i picked up this tube about 20 years ago.
it was used for starter gear cases- starter armature shaft bearings-starter shaft lever-
generator sleeve bushings-tachometer gears and distributor shafts. (uses are on the tube)
but, there were times when we didn't have the grease. and what he would do is used a very closed cellular sponge. he would cut it so it would fit in the 5 cavities where you would put the grease. then he would drip 90w gear oil on the sponge. put the seal and the felt back on, with a little oil on the felt. never had a problem.
obviously, i've done the same thing over the past 45 years.
set up many a distributor for people who have been repeat customers and i've never seen a problem with this old trick from an old mechanic.
i've also used synthetic grease, but the Delco Grease was what i usually used.
thanks for listening. just my 2cents:

[Blued and Painted]

A small amount of Amsoil synthetic grease.