Originally Posted by Benz Dr.

I've been rebuildingh distributors for over 20 years and I really can't see why they put it together like that. The earlier have a hardened pin that is driven in with a light spring fitting into a groove that prevents it from ever moving. The spring is one of those feel good items because the pin will never come out.

The distributors with gear drive are different but they really shouldn't drive any harder than a 6.3 or a 300SE. I suspect that they wanted the gear to be very tight so that it would never develope any play given that the tigger points are also timed to the distributor shaft and need to stay in time with everything else. I've seen a number of distributors where the bottom collar became somewhat loose and idle speed timing was all over the place due to loose parts.