[Bill Harris]

I had a distributor gear shear the roll pin that holds it in place not too long ago. Right on the 1-2 shift. The car just nosed over and lost a ton of power. It didn't quit though since the gear spun on the distributor shaft a little but held at that point. The car would run but barely. I figured out what happened by putting a timing light on it and the timing had shifted from its usual 40+ degrees to around zero.

So if you did something similar, where the gear rotated on the shaft without free-wheeling, then it might have taken some timing out which would have slowed it down before it gave up entirely.