That’s the one I’m referring to.
Says it can be used with any type of cam.

Yes not following that one since we're talking gear wear and not timing chain slop

You might want to back that oil down to 10-40 and see how it does. 20-50 is putting a lot of drag on things, especially when it is cold.

Are you running a hardened washer between the shaft bushing and the gear? Wear in the thrust surface will eat a gear faster than me eating an arbys sandwich.
If the elevation of the gear isn’t correct, the two gears don’t mesh correctly. I strongly believe that is your issue.

That’s an interesting point. One, i’ve never thought about before. I think in the future builds that i do, i will make a part of the engine buikd steps, the following: Use machinist dye on the gear, install in engine and rotate with distrib installed. Then inspect contact pattern to see if any adjustment is needed.
Good point!

Roller cam, is the thrust of the cam being controlled?

I have the Hughes Melonized one in my car, I have over 6k miles on it, I checked it at 3k miles & it still look new, I will check it this week . Not saying its ok to run one I do have a HV pump but I have no choice.

I run the Crane melonized gear.

7,000 miles and hundreds of dragstrip passes and it still looks new.

I recall at least one person here telling me to "get back with them when the engine has a few miles on it..."

looks like this to me too ! ..................

I put 3000 street miles and hundreds of passes on my old pump gas Duster with a bronze gear using 5W20Wt regular Valvoline oil in it, no noticeable wear on it when I sold it. I had trimmed the oil pump bypass spring so it had 80Lbs. pressure cold and idled with 20 Lbs. at 850 RPM with 160+F oil temps. and 45 Lbs at or above 1200 RPM with hot oil, 75 Lbs. over 5000 RPM with hot oil
OP, I have seen a bronze gear do what yours did and break off some of the teeth at the track, which makes me believe there are more than one company making them, the good and the bad ones. The cheaper ones are probably not the good ones

When you get a new gear, put marking compound on it and check the pattern, like a rear gear. You may have to space up, or cut down height, and you may need to shim the cam forward, or backward. I've seen this happen before, and its been misalignment when it happens fast. Any bias in that gear puts a huge load on the gear as it tries to screw the cam out of the block. The last one I saw was an old factory block where the block busing was so worn it has the gear way too low.

Sorry, brain fade - thinking of cam gear, duh!

A friend just got a new Isky roller and it allows steel gears to be used now and I also replaced mine after 6 years and it had slop but was not tore up like the op's. I also had a 3-piece Torrington bearing set up between the block bushing and the bottom of the bronze gear after Pettis machined off material to make up the difference but I was off on my measurement so it rode too high on the cam gear. Got a new Crane bronze gear which is the hardest Rockwell tested one they offer as far as bronze goes and just one flat washer off of the Torrington deal and my timing is rock solid now with my cam preloaded against the timing cover with a rollerized Isky cam button going on 15+ years and LOTS of street miles.....

I totally agree and haven't seen many that appear ok at all. I am working now on shortening my new cam on my lathe and making a home made hard spacer for raising/shimming the oil pump drive gear . And, I have a solid flat tappet lifter dang near hanging off the edge of a cam lobe on this one. I also have the need to use a adjustable rotor for the Distributor. All top quality brands too. I've been a machinist etc. all of my working career and tend to see these anomalies easily by eye at first before getting out the micrometers. I can't imagine not checking this area in a engine.

[censored] is going on with this project raising the oil pump drive gear Is the oil pump drive bushing in decent usable condition? Is your block even usable?
What type motor are you working on that you need to lengthen the cam on?
Sometimes you need to throw away all the bad parts and get better parts, especially if you want good results

Lengthening the cam = spacing it forward? That's interesting. Have you compared the gear location to another cam?

Also, I'm sure you noticed but you'll need to shim the crank gear as well. I had to do this on mine and I didn't even space the upper gear out. I used pinion shims.

I just pulled my milodon gear out and after about 1000-1200 miles, It doesn't look much better than the original posters. What are the shims people are using to space it up?
Seems I've also read people de-burring the cam gear, mine is a comp cam.

Thanks, melonized it is.

The interesting thing about needing special parts to rectify this problem is........
For the motors built using old OE blocks....... they probably got 100k out of the original cam and gear...... and were probably still fine when they were pulled(so...... how bad could the alignment have been?)

And...... you never really hear of Mopars wearing out iron gears being used on flat tappet cams.

I don’t think the bronze gears are as good as they used to be(no proof, just a gut feeling)........ and for sure...... I’ve seen some roller cam cores where the ends of the teeth on the gear could use some attention.

It would make for an interesting test......
On a roller cam where the teeth were pretty squared off...... buy two of the same part number bronze gear at the same time.
Install cam and gear, run for say 2000-2500 miles.

Remove cam and gear....... dress up the teeth on the cam, reinstall cam with new gear.
Run for the same mileage as done for the first stage of the test...... pull gear and compare wear of second gear to the wear on the gear from the first stage.

Once you find correct registration get a torrington bearing, and cut the gear down for it, and it'll never change.