As we came into the 1955 era most of the GM distributors had up until around 1963 a felt wick oiler/tube affair that was simply a cast iron distributor with a small portion of the bushing wall ground away where the distributor shaft was exposed. On the outside of the distributor housing was a threaded hole that a steel tube with a Gitz Bros. Oiler was screwed into on the housing.there was a round cotton wick that was pushed in that touched the exposed distributor shaft and the wick held oil that was manually placed in the tube. There was an initial lube charge when built and then periodically every 2000 miles the tube was serviced with approx 15 drops of 30W engine oil to rewet the wick.
These worked wonderfully well if the service interval was kept up.
Later they got rid of the oiler tube deal and simply cast a cavity in the top of the distributor housing. GM ran cast iron housing distributors across the board approx up until 1966.
The latest Pontiac iron case distributor I’ve seen was dated early august of 1966. Then they went to aluminum housings across the board, with one big exception… tach drive corvettes used iron case distributors up until 1974. And I’m sure big C60 Chevy dump truck chassis may have used iron also.
At the inception of the aluminum distributors there was a 5 cavity grease well in each and every housing that was to be packed with grease and covered with a plastic grease seal to hold in the grease and keep contaminants out .
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