The Stovebolt Site Forums The Shop Area Engine Shop Distributor - bakelite plug

There is what the Shop Manual labels a "bakelite plug" that it appears is held against the distributor shaft by a spring located in the grease cup. Anyone know if these are available? What is the plug and the spring's function?

What year?

Sorry, it was in my signature...should have put it in the body.

'51 216

This thread discusses a Bakelite or fiber plug

https://www.stovebolt.com/ubbthreads/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=709559&page=1

I don't know if the issue ever go resolved but it makes interesting reading

Hopefully someone will be along to chime in

I went with a remanufactured distributer from NAPA

Good luck

Thanks! Good info in that thread.

I am old enough to remember when a lot of machines had grease cups and my father sold cup grease. Every grease cup that I can remember had some kind of fiber disc that would limit the amount of grease while not scratching the shaft. Parts houses carried these discs in generic sizes. Plastic as we know it now had not been invented yet. Most of these discs looked like the same material as the rubbing block on points of that day. The disc had limited life and had to be replaced occasionally. These discs were strictly to limit the flow of grease and had nothing to do with stabilizing the shaft. Cup grease was about the consistency of Crisco shortening. It was a totally different consistency than chassis lube or wheel bearing grease.

And that was what we were talking about in another thread Ken, cup grease, can't find it anymore. The picture of the can of Western Tire grease that I posted over there was wheel bearing grease and it was a very thick, waxy, fibrous grease. But in our application in the grease cups of the AD distributors the Chevrolet Service Manual does call out CL (chassis grease).
But getting back to the “fiber disc”, Ken you’ve brought up yet another explanation for the disc, that is as a restriction for the grease. If you take all of the information gleaned from the parts books over a 40 year span, it appears to me that the engineers at GM also had some disagreement on what to put behind the grease cup in the distributor. Over the years they listed fiber discs, felt wicks, and even a lock washer in was illustration. What was that all about?? And I’ll repeat what I said in the other thread, that these parts books were written by technical writers, not engineers or mechanics so they are not always the gospel.
What Ken says about the disc acting as a restriction probably makes more sense than anything that I’ve heard so far. And I have found them behind most of the grease cups I’ve had out, but one in particular was missing altogether. It appears that at one time in the past they had a felt wick inserted in the spring although that doesn’t make any sense it your pushing grease thru it. It may have been that the oil separated in the older greases and the wick was there to hold that. Apparently they did away with the wick in the later distributors. But the Bakelite disc seems to have been there from the very start so the disc and a spring is all that I’m putting behind my grease cup, filled with chassis grease. Hell, if the distributors that I’ve got in my ’50 and ’54 managed to survive a half century so
far, I’m sure they will outlast me no matter what I do as long as that includes is some sort of lubrication applied regularly.
DG

On pillow blocks, if the disc was missing the grease would be gone in no time and you risked getting a hot spot. We still sold cup grease well into the 60's just because many of the old farmers figured grease cups needed cup grease. However, todays grease is so much better than the grease was 50 years ago, if I were to find a can of cup grease somewhere in the corner of my warehouse, I think I would put it on eBay instead of using it.