Looking at it closely I think I'd run it. The damage isn't on a structural part, it's more like a lip to keep the larger particles of dirt out. The support for the bearing race is intact, and the area for the seal to be presed in is at least 90% there.

On this board most everyone is willing to throw money away to be "safe."

Especially if it isn't their money.

There are a lot of Nervous Nellies and I can't figure out if they worry about things that much why they aren't driving brand new cars. By the time a car gets to be 40 years old it has seen better days, don't tell me it isn't a lot more flexible than new. But people drive them and stick 500hp engines into them without much thought. Yet they get overwrought about some little thing that logically isn't going to affect anything.

Years ago my cousins introduced me to a dirt track racer named Vern. He had an early Chevy II with a junkyard 327 and it ran hard. Talking to him about the engine he said that it had some of two or three different sets of pistons in it. I asked him were they about the same and he said no, some were 10.5:1 and some were 8.5:1 and they were just scattered in the block. Now no one here on this board would dare to run such a motor but it ran hard and didn't break for at least one season and probably more. He knew it's just a lump of cast iron, not a god or a person with feelings.

My

R.