Farmall Cub

My 1950 Cub has developed a rattle in the distributor. When I remove the cap I notice the shaft that the rotor sets on has a lot of slack. I am thinking some gear in the bowels of all this needs attention? My binderbooks manual doesn't say anything about R&R of the distributor. A search of the archives didn't help much. I read HLChavin and he has superiour detail on a magneto based system. Does the timing and techniques he refers to translate to my battery based system? In particular he says the rotor should point to 12 oclock when the engine is at TDC. Mine points to the #1 on the cap - about 1 oclock. Maybe HL wrote on eastern time and I am on central? ha ha Or is there another manual I should buy?
Maybe I'll just set it for TDC and pull the distributor out, take a look with my photographic memory (ha!- it needs developing) then procede to fix whatever seems in need.
Thanks
Stanley

The battery systems have the distributor pointing at somewhere like 2oclock, 5 o clock, 8 o clock and 11 o clock positions, where the mags go at 12, 3, 6, 9.