Howdy,
This car starts and runs well but the high oil consumption has been bugging me. In searching for a leak, I notice some fresh oil on the underside of the distributor. The inside of the cap was a little oil spattered but not fully coated.
The first pic is the rear surface of the distributor plate.
The second pic showing the front side of plate and O rings. I could not find any break or in either O ring.

Questions:

1. Is this considered a lot of oil?

2. The dark film seen on front part of plate and around O rings is kind of goey, not runny like oil. Is this some kind of silicon sealant that should be reapplied after cleaning it all off or is it just congealed oil?

3. Should these O rings be replaced anyway if they don't show any break?

4. Is a damaged internal seal the likely source of the oil leak?

Thanks. Hoping for more excellent feedback from fellow brickboarders. This site has saved me a small fortune already.

I couldn't get to your picture,

As the resident brickboard distributor expert, any ten+ year old distributor needs the shaft seal replaced. There is a good section in the 700/900 FAQ on this, but the link to it did not work when I just tried it. Steve Ringlee should have the link fixed shortly. I'd like to thank him for all of his hard work on maintaining the 700/900 FAQ.

I would also replace the o-ring on the distributor base. The small o-ring on the tip of the shaft does not need to be replaced since it doesn't seal anything. All it does is keep the distributor shaft snug in the recess in the camshaft.
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john

Ok, I give up trying to upload the distributor images. If you wouldn't mind, check them out and give me your feedback re. the 4 questions.
Thanks a lot.

How is this for your image?


You have a bad shaft seal, and the distributor base o-ring also needs to be replaced.

The distributor in the picture below looked almost as bad as yours before I started on it.


The base is shown below:


This distributor was returned to service, and does not leak at all.

If you aren't up to replacing the shaft seal yourself, I can do it for you, and I even have spare cores if you need to keep driving the car.
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john