[EDNY]

First time I ever ran into this.  My truck has a 350 engine, it started making a whining noise that I thought was the idler bearing, replaced it, still noisy at certain times, replaced the serpentine belt and A/C delete pulley..still had the occasional noise. Had all of these parts (used) on hand.

Could swear the noise was up front with hood open, but from under the truck sounded like it could be in the area of the starter.  Suspecting the distributor did an Internet search and learned that SBC distributors occasionally have bearing problems.

Again I have several distributors on hand so I just swapped it...Noise Is Gone!

The bad distributor still turns smoothly by hand....but is now tagged bad.

FYI!

[TFoch]

Good to know!

[sammons]

Lol, Ed I ran into that once.  Long story, short time!

I had 1000 miles on my 283 in the '57 during my shake down. 2-3 trips down main cruising I noticed under the street lights when flipping a U-turn a light blue haze. So before I painted it, I pulled the motor thinking the rings didn't seat. Light hone and re-ringed. Painted car, drove 20 miles to test motor, put the hood on and headed to California.

 Got to Grants New Mexico and slight miss and a whine had developed. points had closed a bit, set and left. Still whined 75 miles miss back. Checked points, off again. Set miss gone. Got to Flagstaff Az,  still whined and driving me crazy not knowing what that noise was and dealing with points closing too. Went to Napa and got top quality points, condeser, rotor and cap. All good but now it's sounding like a Pete Jackson old school geardrive. Drove for 50 miles miss back. Set points good, another jaunt and miss. I pulled into Ludlow Ca at a truck stop. Really crazy  rattely whine, opened window to set points... distributor shaft was vibrating like crazy.

 Then I realized my mistake. 🙄  When I pulled distributor to re-ring, i stuck the shaft down in solvent to soak a bit, blew off and set aside. I forgot to relube it. The solvent dried it up and the upper bushing felt got loaded with solvent. Knocked the bushings flat out, that shaft seemed to move back and forth a quarter inch😁

Stopped at Barstow and got a new loaded distributor(vaccume advance and all) for $35 and $15 core. Man did that box have the dust on it from sitting on the shelf for a long time😁 Qiuickly changed out my new H.D. Napa parts and sent brother back in for core refund. Quiet and no more miss🙂

Oh still had blue haze after ideling around for 30 mins, found out the heads i traded for were for circle track....no valve seals. 🙄 quick fix there.