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Ordered up 125# springs, beefier pushrods, double roller and an injecto toreplace to one I lost. Still need the lifters and apparently a hardened input shaft.

Ordered up 125# springs, beefier pushrods, double roller and an injecto toreplace to one I lost. Still need the lifters and apparently a hardened input shaft.

Now I wonder how I should get the trans out to put in a hardened input shaft...

If the engine is out? Out the top (...that's how I've managed with the '99 and older). Probably easier than dropping the subframe.

You can change the shaft by removing the side pan and the entire valve body assembly, and only need the case to valve body gaskets. But depending on the miles, I'd at least pull the valve body apart and make sure there isn't any buildup in the valve/bores.

Yeah, motor is out, through the top it is. Wonder if I should try to drop the subframe after the trans is done to put the whole thing in from the bottom.

Trans has like 4000 miles on it. If that.

Got the JP double roller timing set, comp 125# springs and oil restricted pushrods this week. Set about fixing the timing set last night. Seems pretty sad that I had to put an hour or so of machining and deburring into a timing set.
Heres what the cam gear looked like as delivered. As you can see, the cutter for the teeth left some nasty burrs between the rows of teeth. On the outside the just hit it with an 80 grit sanding disk, leaving burrs between the teeth and a crummy finish on the sides of the teeth.




Heres the cam gear after cleaning it up. I had to deburr both sides of every tooth, then brush and sctotchbrite it. Still not prefect but at least it shouldnt drop chunks of metal into the engine.



Now for the issue that caused the most concern; the ID chamfer on the crank gear. I forgot to take a before picture, but i did measure the stock and JP crank gears' chamfers. The stock chamfer is about .123"X45*. The chamfer on the JP gear was .0620". Tossed it in the crappy manual lathe and made this.


Somehow Intense sent me two different styles of pushrods. 8 with a ball type end and 4 straight. Measuring the oil restriction hole reveals that the straight ones have a .0023 bigger orifice. Also, the ball end style weighs about 2 grams less. If it was 6 of each, I wouldnt be worried, but im going to have them send me a full matching set.

yourgrandma wrote: Somehow Intense sent me two different styles of pushrods. 8 with a ball type end and 4 straight.

Those are the kind of things that turn a weekend job into a week long job. I hate when that happens.

I spoke to John about it. I had given him the impression that time was crucial, so he sent me what he had ratherr than waiting a couple weeks for the identical ones to arrive. Theres probably no functional difference at all, but Im pretty picky about this sort of thing. I often wonder what would happen if someone built an engine with the kind of tolerances I work with at work. Formula One anyone?

Hopefully I can shake some of these cold symptoms and get to work pulling the trans out today.

Today, got the timing set on which involved a little heat and some finessing with emery cloth. Also switched out the valvesprings and installed the head studs.

Im doing some research on the head gaskets because theres only one part number but they are labled "FRONT ->" with arrows and all but arent symmetrical and arent the same top to bottom. I could either run one "backwards" (front to back) or one upside down. Im also worried about the tiny little coolant passage holes in the gaskets.

Also did some poking around in my wiring to figure out a current leakage situation to do with my turn signals. Theres a connection somewhere allowing power to go from the turn signals to the marker lights, causing my tail lights to illuminate when the blinkers are on. Did enough to figure out that its in the cars wiring and not directly caused by the PWM circuit for my LED front marker/turn signals.

Get rid of the damper and Rolon chain.

Damper isn't going to hurt anything. I've never seen any specific complaints about the rolon chain. Only "its gay, shuddup, get the other one", stuff like thelat. I understand its not the absolute best one out there but its running fine on a lot of engines. Care to offer any reason you think I should delay completing this project and spend even more money?

*dang* that's starting to come along well, great work and choice of parts!

Mmmm, she's pretty...

After more reading, literally the only actual mention I've seen about higher failure rates of rolon chains was from zzp telling everyone to buy rollmasters. So even though they never figured out that the id chamfer didn't match and nobody seemed to know that was causing the crank gears to fail, hthey can blame the chain for breakage that was probably caused by the misalignment of the gears.

Countless other applications run rolon brand chain with no evidence that I can find of a higher rate of failure. I would be very interested to see any independent, scientific evidence that the chain itself is inferior or that somehow a damper is harmful. I'm open-minded enough to listen, but I haven't been given enough credible info to pull this off, throw it away, spend more money, machine another set of gears that are probably made just as sloppily as the JP set and lose another half a month.

The chain clears the oil pump cover pretty well. There's no gasket in there for this picture so add anothe .02 or so. I'll take a pic or two with the gasket. I'm not going to seal up the front cover until I can get more concrete info on the timing set.

Looks great so far, Randy! Hopefully the chamfering is the cause of other failures, I'm ready to see this thing run already!

Little setback due to my own dumbass. Too embarassed to even talk about it right now...

Uh oh

Yeah.... Lets say theres some cam lobe damage.

something fall into the lifter hole or what?