[Blown353]

Be very careful Ned; don't just throw a new distributor gear on and go.

A few years ago I ate my distributor gear (MSD gear and Comp standard cast core hydraulic roller.)

It took 2200 miles on my car to completely destroy the gear, and the gear on the cam wasn't so hot afterwards either. Not bad, but not great.

I didn't have my oil filter bypass plugged and the debris scored all the bearings in the motor and trashed the oil pump.

What I'm saying is this... while everything is probably OK because you were running a good filter and the bypass is plugged, if it were my engine I would pull and check all the bearings.

Anyways, as said the fix is to run a genuine GM Melonized gear. It will live a long and happy life against a Comp -8 cast roller core.

The MSD gear / comp cast core cam incompatibility has been well known for several years now and unfortunately you found out about it the hard way as did I.

Also as Jody said, the -8 roller cast cores can start "tracking" the lobes; after about 400# open spring pressure or so you are playing with a ticking bomb. It may eat the lobes, it may not. The cast cores really aren't even stout enough to withstand the springs necessary to properly control the valvetrain. If you call comp and ask for spring recommendations for 2 identical cams, one on a cast core and one on a billet core they always recommend more spring pressure for the billet core cam even though both cams have the exact same lobes!

The best bet is to get the cam custom ground on a -9 billet core and then have an iron distributor gear pressed onto the cam core; comp can do this even on hydraulic roller and "street" solid roller cams. The press-on iron gear lets you run a GM melonized gear on the distributor for a very long life. That's how I do all my hydraulic roller motors now; I have 4 or 5 I've put together now on -9 cores / press on gears with GM Melonized gears and they're all running great, some have 25K+ miles on them now and the distributor gears & cam gears still look brand new.

If it was my engine, my game plan would be to pull the motor and inspect the bearings, then have the same cam reground on a -9 billet core with the press on iron gear. Put it back together and put a genuine GM Melonized gear on the distributor and it should last many, many miles.