Does Line Honing change the crankshaft's centerline?

jos51700 said

I disagreed but only cuz I can't agree and disagree to the same post. You can't line hone the mains without moving the crank centerline a little bit (which is kinda what I heard you saying) but I do agree with you that ONLY if it's done right, it won't change it enough to need a special timing chain set.

That said, I don't know how gear drives compensate for this, even in a production-tolerance situation, let alone after machining. I put the tensioner on the timing chain in my small blocks so I never worried much about any of it.

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It depends on the gear drive. If it’s a 2 gear type Of (very rare) you need an over sized gear. If it’s a 4 gear type (dual idler) they compensate by allowing the idler gears to float between the cam and crank gears. They can move laterally between the crank and cam gears. If it’s a 3 gear type with a fixed idler gear, you can move the plate that the idler gear is fix to a skosh to adjust your gear clearance.

Milodon says to use newspaper but I slap a dial indicator on the gear and slide it over until I get .002-.003 backlash and send it.

If I have to use a timing chain they all get the tensioner.