Wanted: 365 GT 2+2 rev counter angle drive

If anybody has one for sale I'd be very interested. I need the newer style, i.e. the zinc body version, not the earlier brass version. Please see the picture. Yes, the back plate failed and the drive gear is on the road somewhere. :-(
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@turbo-joe - Thanks for your message! I don't know if the brass part will work. Maybe somebody on this forum knows?

The only difference I see is the shape of the part that goes into the distributor. The brass part has a longer, narrow section, whereas the zinc part only has a little indentation where the clamping bolt meets it. I have no idea if that makes a difference to function. Honestly, I care more about having a working rev counter than originality. If the brass part is available and will work in this application I'm definitely open to using it. At least it has cotter pins to keep whatever happened from happening again. Right now I'm using an aftermarket electronic rev counter just to have something, but that feels kind of wrong in this car.

 

Thanks! I will check with those.

 

Thanks John,

That's good advice that I wish I could follow, but the drive gear and backing plate are communing with Mother Nature on the side of a mountain road somewhere...

My working theory is that 50+ year old captive grease caused the driven gear to bind and the drive gear walked its way out pushing on the backing plate. If possible I will install a Zerk fitting on the next one, and definitely cotter pins. Live and learn.

 

Thanks John,

That looks exactly like what I want. Do you happen to know where I can get my paws on one of those?

My busted drive doesn't have the Zerc fitting, the backing plates are just pressed in without any cotter pins and it has a zinc body. And the gear has a different cut than yours. I wonder if mine is aftermarket or an "improved" (read: cheaper) design for later cars?

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Thanks John, Will check with them.

 

Thanks so much for the responses!

@John Vardanian - I checked with GTO Engineering both in UK and US. They told me the angle drive is not available. Where or from whom did you learn about the used units?

@Edward 96GTS - They say they're trying to source new units since they get many requests for this particular part. So demand is there, now all we need is supply. A little experiment in practical capitalist theory, I suppose?

In the meantime I'm still looking for a drive in any condition, so any suggestions are warmly welcomed.

If anybody knows where I can find a couple broken units I could Frankenstein it. The one that came out of my car is beyond repair since the primary gear and shaft are missing.

 

Thanks John,
I will follow up on those leads.

By the way, while I did mention the zinc part in my first post I'm now at the point where I would be ecstatic to find anything that will fit into the distributor and make the tachometer spin. Chalk it up to being younger and more naive a week ago, ha ha!

 

John, You don't happen to have more pictures of your disassembled drive?

I'm drawing a total blank everywhere, even though I'm willing to pay the outrageous $$$ - nobody actually has them in stock and don't know when they will get replenished. (Tried about a dozen potential sources with same result.) Thus I think I'm going to have to have mine repaired, which means fabricating the missing parts from scratch without any blueprints. The more pictures of the internals I can get hold of the higher the chances of success...

 

John, Thank you for your for the pictures. It's beginning to look more an more like repair/fabrication/adaptation is the sole remaining option. Fitting the backing plate to my old unit could turn out to be problematic since there isn't much material left to fold over the plate. Somebody suggested that I could start with a unit from an MG and I've seen some tractor units on eBay that look very similar to mine.

Norbert, Thank you for the heads up. The last thing I want to do is spin the tach backwards and end up with one more broken and hard-to-find part! I read Brian Brown's post about clock/counter-clock rotation and it makes sense to me, but I will study the remaining pieces of my old unit to see if they bear any evidence of the direction of rotation.

Looks like it will be an interesting winter...

 

To Norbert's point: Looking at the distributor from the front of the engine, the gears of the angle drive in John's pictures mesh on the left side of the input shaft when the output shaft points downward, like on a 330 engine, whereas mine mesh on the right side of the input shaft, like on a Daytona engine.

I'm thinking this would mean that my angle drive will rotate in the opposite direction to John's. Would that be a correct conclusion?

 

Mark, That looks just like the speedometer drive for my car, but scavenging the internals could work if it's a 1:1 ratio.

How does one PM on this site? I'll PM you as soon as I can figure it out...