I haven't had as many Slants apart or distributors out of as many here have had/, and most that I have had, have been 15-20-more years ago/
(until the past weekend, that was) and my memory isn't what it used to be... but of what I can remember, I don't believe I have seen anything BUT a nylon gear on the bottom of a slant distributor.... my 85 has a nylon gear and I have 2, '70s electronic distributors here/ and a NOS distributor from back in the day, that are all nylon geared.
I do clearly remember my 79 D100 that I yanked and replaced with another slant, because it abruptly died on me, was a nylon gear on the distributor. so was my 80 Aspen, my 80 Volare, and the 63 engine that went into that 80 Aspen.....
When that 79 truck died on me, I coasted into a farm field entrance to get off the road, and discovered a sheared dist gear/ back then, every parts store had them on the "HELP!" rack for a couple of bucks/ those, and 351W Ford ones......
but I walked home, got Mom's car and went to closest parts store for a new gear.... put it in, static timed it, cranked it, just about the time it seemed like it was gonna start, I got a huge backfire/ and my rotor would be about 2 cylinders off from where I installed it..... pulled dist again, to find another stripped drive gear. I went back and got a couple more, tried a 2nd time, same result..... no wonder only a couple of bucks.... they are "junk" I thought. When that 2nd gear stripped, I went to pull the distributor again/ and then I discovered the reason.... I saw a busted tooth on the cam......this time, it was rotated upwards towards the distributor hole, where I could see it. this was the original engine from the truck, somewhere around 125k miles/ up til now, it had run great...... In the day I found a whole running slant, cheaper than it was to buy a new cam, lifters, timing set and gaskets..... so I swapped engines..... but soon wished I'd have fixed the original one, my replacement was an oil burning, down-on-power, pig as compared to how that original engine had been......
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