I have a 292 in my 1955 F350, probably from a 60's era car.  A couple of weeks ago I was driving a long and heard what sounded like a bolt coming loose and banging on the frame.  Well, the engine immediately died.  I towed it home and got under the hood.  I found that the rotor wasn't rotating at all.  I could rotate the engine by the starter with no problems.  Set the engine on TDC and tried to pull the distributor, it wouldn't budge.  So to give myself some more room I pulled the intake manifold off; this time I was able to get some leverage and bump the engine over and out came the distributor.  I looked at the drive gear and it was missing two teeth and the distributor shaft was as tight as a german virgin.  At this point I could look down at the cam shaft gear and it had two teeth missing.  The engine doesn't even have 500 miles on it.  I haven't taken the distributor apart yet but has anyone else had a distributor just freeze like that?

Yikes!  Sorry to hear that.  At 500 miles, it seems to me you had bigger problems than a distributor lockup.  It sounds more like a bad cam install or a mismatch of some kind.  New cam bearings can cause problems in these engines if not seated correctly.  The new cam must spin freely and there are differences in Y Block valve train parts from different years.  Did you change the cam or distributor gear when the engine was built?  I would talk with the engine builder.

I once had a Y Block that broke the cam with the engine running.  The motor quit.  I pulled a valve cover and the rockers weren't moving.  When we got it back to the garage, chucks of cam fell down in the engine when I pulled on the timing gear.  Needless to say, that one was turned into a boat anchor.

The first thought that comes to mind is too much fore/aft movement of the camshaft which in turn allowed the distributor shaft to bend and ultimately jam.  The order of the various spacers on the front of the camshaft is critical and if not correct, can cause some major destruction at both the front and rear of the engine.  500 miles would sound about right for this.  A complete tear down will be needed to determine exactly what happened in this case.

Lorena, Texas (South of Waco)

I found that the camshaft spacers to thrust plate have different thickness depending on which block you have used.

56 VIC  Gene Stoehr Sr.