Bad distributor... Any ideas why, or natual wear? *video inside*

Bad distributor... Any ideas why, or natural wear? *video inside*

Well, I noticed this yesterday when I cranked up the convertible for a Saturday ride. It made a very odd noise under the hood, so I checked it out and the distributor was just making a rattling sound. I removed it, and there is some REALLY bad play in it... It's almost as if some bushing or bearing went bad... Is this normal wear on a car that sees a lot of track time, and regular 6K shifts, or is there something further I need to look at? The car has 99K on it now... The mods are listed on my web page in the signature.

I ordered an MSD Pro Billet distributor as a replacement...

This is a video of the kind of play I'm talking about, and sorry about the bad lighting...

Small file added for dialup users (~400K)
http://users.myexcel.com/ae4vr/images/baddistsmall.mpg

For Broadband users:
http://users.myexcel.com/ae4vr/images/baddistributor.mpg

So I take it that no one has seen this before?

Yeah, and it still idled decently, and pulled right up to 6000 RPMs... I guess the new distributor should help, but I just hope all that slop didn't screw up my oil pump...

It didn't cause any problems until it started rattling... That's the first time I noticed it...