Steve Davis and the team at Performance Distributors down in Tennessee have been building ignition products for decades – their Davis Unified Ignition system fits many vehicles and provides an integrated distributor/ignition module for many different types of engines.

In the course of business, they’ve come across just about any problem you can imagine when it comes to their products, from excessive distributor gear wear on Chevrolet and Ford performance engines to distributors found full of oil. They’ve put together a great Tech Tips page on their website to assist their customers in diagnosing and repairing problems.

For example, when a Chevrolet engine block, heads, and intake have been milled to correct flatness deficiencies, this can cause the distributor to bottom out and cause excessive gear wear – wrecking your timing and potentially more if the issue is not found and corrected prior to installation. Cam walk can also contribute to the excessive wear issue, and for this the company recommends using an aftermarket steel or aluminum timing cover and cam button to prevent the camshaft from moving around in the engine.

The same type of abnormal gear wear issue can present itself in Ford engines as well. For some unknown reason, many Ford street engines have been upfitted with high volume oil pumps, and these place a great deal of stress on the distributor and camshaft gears, which can cause the distributor gear to eat itself. There are other potential causes as well as solutions presented – check out the page for more information on this.

They also present a number of different cause-and-effect issues related to the installation of one of their D.U.I. distributors and provide direction for a number of tests that can be run to diagnose solve the problem – all without ever picking up the phone.

For more information on the complete line of Performance Distributors products, check out their website.