The gear turns as it drops down into place.  Unless you've done it a few times, there's probably about a 95% chance you'll end up getting it one tooth off.  There is a special puller you can buy to pull the shaft out, but if the engine is together and the shaft is seated in place with the washer under it, my advice is to leave well enough alone and compensate by turning the body of the distributor to achieve the correct ignition timing.  Technically, it isn't "correct" but it as long as you end up with the correct timing, the drive shaft being one tooth off is just a cosmetic issue.

That's my 2 cent's worth.  I gott'a run now.  RetBugtech is probably looking for something to throw at me!   :lol:   If my advice and his are different, take my advice and listen to him!  He's been wrenching on these critters longer than I've been around.  

Like Zen said, Unless you are running a dist with a vacumn advance that might hender you getting the timing right, leave the thing alone as long as you can have the rotor pointing to # 1 and have room to set your timing. Most of the later dist. have a retarded cam lobe on # 3 cly to help cool off #3 Cly and if you do a "wire Dance" (moving the plug wires around) you will end up retarding the wrong cly.
    If you are running a mechanical advance dist. (like a 009), just turn the dist. until all the marks lineup (TDC on crank and rotor on the notch on the dist.)
    If you move the drive gear, be very,very careful not to drop the 2 little washers if you can. You will not be able to get them out and they will fall right in on the camshaft gear. Not good. Those little washers will destroy the camshaft if you spin the engine over.
   At this point ,leave things alone if you can.
   
   ZEN, We need to have a long talk with Jason. He was still "loading" his Huggies when we were paying our dues back in the "Jurassic" period and now gets all this info for free. I think at a rate of 50 cents per tip that he has gotten from us, he owes us a lot of money and for dang sure a lot more respect [-(   What do you think ?

Of course we are "funn'n.  Isn't that what we do best ?   Its the people who do not know what goes on in this club that look at us and wonder what kind of "crazy" folks live in here. Maybe thats why we have one of the most "looked at forums" in the country. I even had one guy from another club out west tell me that he would rather watch our forums than his own club forum because his club forums were boring and being jerks about things.
     I know of some people who would have really gotten upset and ready to fight if they had gotten the abuse that we gave Smelly-Cat on the famous"Slow Starter" thread. Mike( SC) is one of the nicest Guy I have ever met and is one of the "Best Sports" I have ever seen.
     This club has a whole pile of good sports and if I step on someone I'll will more than likey hear about it. As it stands right now ,nobody is safe in here, me included. :lol:  :lol:

Hey, Not a bad idea.  Then I could pass a VW hub cap around for donations to benefit Reinhart "The stout Hearted" and now Prinz Alber
"From The House of Allison" What do you think ? :lol:  :lol:

The triangle mafia again has rattled the cage of the Godfather. This disrespect cannot continue to go unpunished,Carefull of your words to the Godfather or you's guys might find your duct tape and swiss army knives sleepin with the fishes.
Now kneel and kiss the torque wrench and let the families fued no more. :lol:  Sorry had to do it!!!

Man! I need a moron's guide rather than an idiot's.  By the way, this is the FIRST time I have done any more car fixing than an alternator, master cylinder or thermostat replacement on ANY vehicle.

Hip,

I grew up in a "GM" house.  Every once in while, a Mopar product would come in the yard just to keep us on our toes . . . but 99% of everything I rode in, watched my dad work on, or turned a wrench on myself growing up was a GM product.  After high school, I got this notion that I wanted to be an auto mechanic, so I took a year of schooling on the subject at Walker County Technical School.  Due to the bad economy at the time I graduated, there were mechanics with 20 years experiance being laid off right and left.  My addiction to food eventually won out and I gave up on the mechanicing for a living idea and went to work in a textile plant.  Over the years, I tried to keep my mechanical skills as sharp as possible by doing all of my own mechanic work . . .  but still only working on GM products.

Then one day about 10 years ago a poor little rusty, half taken apart 1971 VW Bug came into my life.  A righthand thread bolt still turns clockwise to tighten it, counterclockwise to loosen it . . . other than that basic fact, FORGET ANYTHING AND EVERYTHING you know about mechanicing!   :lol:  A VW Bug (and all of it's air-cooled cousins) is a different creature.  A trick I learned early in my "VW carreer" is to seek out the "old" guys like our very own "Ret.Bugtech" (a.k.a. "The Godfather") and ask a lot of questions . . . you may be on the low end of the VW learning curve right now, but these "old" guys can make your trip up the learning curve fast and less painfull than the "figure it out the hard way as you go" route.

So, don't worry that you don't have a lot of experiance . . . unless you got that experiance on an old VW, it wouldn't do you a lot of good anyway!  For example, the first time I tore into a VW engine . . . without a manual, of course . . . don't need one . . . I'm an experianced mechanic . . . been helping rebuild small block Chevy V8s since I was old enough to hold a wrench . . . anyway, back to my story . . . I've got this engine partially apart, find and fix the problem and then start putting it back together.  I stick the heads on and wonder for half a second what the nuts torque to . . . and then from somewhere in the back of my mind I hear a voice saying "a head bolt that size should torque to about 65 pounds."  I listened to the voice in my head.  The trouble is, that voice in my head don't know jack squat about old VW engines!  So, I've just torqued the nuts down to close to three times as tight as they should be . . .

With that said, welcome to our forums.  Don't worry about getting on here and asking dumb questions.  There are no dumb questions.  You may get a dumb answer every now and then, but it's not because you ask a dumb question!   :wink: