[Sun Tuned]

The old ball bearing 985 tach drive Chevrolet distributor was a nice piece. Upper ball bearing in an iron case. There may have been a version of that for the 409 engines, but that I am not sure about. I bet our own Skip Fix would have much better insight on that.

There just wasn’t much in my opinion to be had there as far as meaningful gains over a bushing vs bearing deal. I do believe the bearing was better for high RPM no doubt, but honestly it wasn’t by a large margin. Certainly not given the cost involved. I think ultimately the bushing was plenty satisfactory for performance vs cost and likely the reason they pulled the bearing setup.

I believe Chevrolet was in fact the only gm division to incorporate an upper ball bearing in the housings of their ultra HP units.

I won’t get into the grease thing ,as I think it’s covered rather well in that distributor grease sticky at top of street section.

Maybe this will answer some lingering questions and we can put this to bed once and for all.