Timing Gear Drive
Well finally! Here's some pics of my setup. I mentioned earlier about making an oiler for the bearing. While I was at it I made it squirt the teeth too. The two holes are .009". I had to grind down a .020" drill as that was the smallest I had.
The oil line was a brake line with the zinc stripped off, that I laser welded into the cam plate after drilling intersecting holes, so it feeds from the lifter gallery, I put a small hole in the gallery plug, I forget the size but somewhere around .020. A little oil resistant sealer on the back of the plate. After i lasered it i thought I might as well silver braze a fillet around the joint, extra insurance against a leak. Pulled the bearing for that. I lost the plating near the weld so I just removed the whole thing. I had to grind down the side of the cam plate near the bottom hole to clear the aluminum cover.
The crank gear fits flush and the gears all line up nicely. I did have to have the recess in the plate deepend by my machine shop, Now I have perfect cam end play. He did this gratis but what the hell I had just spent $2500 on machine work.
Timing the cam was tricky, since there's no dots and I don't have a cam card. I heard about a neat way to phase the cam... Find TDC on #1. Install two identical length lifters in the number six lifter bores. Slide a straight edge over the lifters. If exhaust lifter is higher then the cam is retarded, if intake lifter is higher the cam is advanced.
So what I did was install the stock chain and sprockets dot to dot, which puts me pretty close. Double checked with the #6 lifter trick. then pulled the stock set, installed the CAT without budging the cam. Here I had to eyeball which keyway would line up. You can see its not the 0 offest keyway with the cat logo. So after all that I checked the #6 lifter thing again and it was still where it was before. I then checked all the opening/closing points of the cam and the lobe centers. It looks like I'm maybe retarded ONE degree, which is nothing to worry about... still want to triple check all that. duration @ .050 is about 234 and lift is .450" at the valve. Looking at simliar cams I think I'm in the right ballpark as far as phasing the cam to the crank.