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.
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