Did 1973 318 V8 come from factory with plastic teeth on timing gears?

I once bought a 78 Ford LTD II "not running" which I "humorously" called "the SKUD missile." (Low flying, poorly guided missile.)

Anyhow what had happened is that plastic junk had come off the sprocket, lodged in the oil pump, broke the pump drive AND THE CAM GEAR and so the crank was tore up some too. I bought a re-ring kit, a reground cam kit, new pump and cam gear, etc, and threw it together and drove it to work for about 100+ miles a day for something like 3 years.