The distributor re-seal job on my B230F engine has turned into a giant pain. Even with appropriate tooling, driving out the dowel pin holding the dog to to the shaft was really difficult. I removed all the varnish, installed the Honda shaft seal, kept all the metal and fiber shims in the correct order, and reassembled the distributor using the old dowel pin. After assembly the dog was not moving freely from side to side, but was extremely tight and could only be moved left and right accompanied by a clicking sound.

I removed the dowel pin and measured it to find out that the ends were mushroomed out about 0.001" -- enough to make for real trouble. It turns out that the dowel pin diameter is 0.1562 -- 5/32" which is a standard US diameter for dowel pins. The length, however was non-standard, so I cut down a 5/32" x 1" pin and drove it back in. The dog now slides back and forth smoothly like it is supposed to do as it finds the center of the camshaft.

There seems to be, however, significantly more end play now than I had before. I am measuring about 0.012" - 0.015" clearance with a feeler gauge between the dog and the first metal shim it rides on. The dog pivots freely on the dowel to the extent that the clearance between it and the first shim allows. My recollection is that the dog was quite tightly pressed against the shims before I disassembled it, and it was also quite tight on the first reassembly with the messed up dowel pin.

I did not leave any shims out. As far as I can tell, the dog must be in exactly the same place as it was before and the pressed on shaft collar on the rotor side hasn't moved.

This leaves me with only two explanations for the extra clearance.
1. This is the original clearance before the varnish and gunk took up the extra space.
2. The oilite bearing pressed into the aluminum distributor base moved towards the rotor side during the disassembly or assembly.

I am loath to disassemble this thing once again, but 0.015" is IMHO a lot of end play. I could get some thicker shims or check the status of the oilite bearing. It must have not been in very tight if it moved, bccause I put no direct pressure on it.

Is there an end-play specification for the distributor shaft?

I have only my own distributor so I don't know what's normal.