Distributor Gear Wear

["Bruce Hevner" <scramblr@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Don't know if this might relate to the AMC problem with Dist gears but
thought I'd relay it any way.
 When I was racing Toyota 20r's we had a similar problem. The Toyota uses a
separate replaceable gear on the front end of the cam to drive the dist
only. It does NOT drive anything else. It's easy to inspect this gear by
removing the valve cover (it's an OHC motor). 
 We found that as long as we kept the RPM under about 6500 we had very
little problem with the gear. When we moved up to modified class we changed
cams and started turning the engine 6800-7200. When we turned 7000 or higher
we started seeing a LOT of gear wear. Never had one fail since we were able
to check the gear wear. It was not unusual to have a gear half worn through
the teeth (on the CAM, the dist gear was almost never worn). Since the gears
are relatively cheap and easy to replace we just learned to check and
replace them as needed. I installed a new gear on the Dist one time to see
if it would make any difference,, it didn't. 
 At the time the car owner had a sponsorship from a local parts store and
they wanted to push Havoline oil. So he got all the Havoline he needed. He
used 10-40 and an additive called "Pro-Blend" (to prevent piston galling
since he was running a "fuel additive". The additive didn't seem to help the
gears but DID prevent piston galling from fuel wash.
 I gave the gear a "file test" one time and it seemed very soft to me. I
contacted a local heat treating company and talked to them about the
problem. They offered to test the gears and give me their opinion as to a
cure. They said it sounded like they might be able to "harden" the gear to
get it closer to the hardness of the dist gear but still be soft enough to
prevent galling. But he said they had a minimum charge to do small items
like that and it would probably take 100 or so gears to get them done and a
minimum charge just to check them. I never pursued it any further since it
was cheaper to just replace the gears as needed. The team broke up about a
year later due to a death of one of the members so I never did any more with
it.
Have any of the members had both the dist and cam gear tested by a heat
treating company and if so what were the results?
That's the way I would start looking at the problem,,,
But hey,,, that's just ME.
Bruce Hevner