Distributor gear pin broken ?!?!? (dead 8V solved)

[scirocco@iglou.com (Greg - DriversFound.com)]

Anyone ever have the pin holding the distributor gear on break?

Wednesday, about a mile from home, old reliable left me stranded for the
first time in 13+ years.  The engine lost power and died while driving.
I had fuel and spark, and all the timing marks lined up, but it still
would not start. A couple times I got the engine to run under full
throttle at maybe 100rpms, and once, a good rev.  Then nothing.  AAA had
me home a few hours later.

I spent about 5 hours today testing and re-testing, and searching the
.Org archives.  I still had fuel, but now I had no spark. Test results
were not consistent.  I finally decided it had to be the ignition
control unit or the hall sender.

Well...  When I went to remove the rotor, it didn't pull off the
distributor shaft.  The whole shaft pulled upwards!  One end of the
spring pin holding the gear on to the shaft had sheared off, and the
gear was free spinning.  Frustrating because I bought the distributor
less than a year ago when I did the 3A swap :(  At least it's easily
fixable if I can't get it replaced.

Anyone ever seen this before?  Any thoughts on cause if not just simple
metal failure?  Should the missing metal be safely sitting in the oil
pan until my next oil change?

Could have been much worse I guess...

TIA!

Greg :)  1985 VW Scirocco 2.0L 8V
http://www.DriversFound.com
http://www.GAKMotorsports.com