Timing gear misalignment

[Steffo]

Hey guys,

My engine rebuild includes a new Stealth cam from V8D. When installing I noticed that the cam gear and crank gear misalign horizontally, approx 1-1,5 mm. You can clearly see the misalignment by eye, see picture.

If I don't do anything about this the chain wear will probably be quite excessive, or what do you think? Is it common that you have to grind off material from either the front end of the camshaft or the cam gear to make the gears align in these applications? Adding a shim behind the crank gear doesn't seem like a good option since the crank pulley then obviously will misalign to the other pulleys.

Any wise advice?

I have asked V8D to comment but haven't received any answer yet.

[Steffo]

The cam is as far in as it goes, can't be pushed further. And yes, I have a retainer plate fitted. Turning the gear the other way around doesn't do any difference in this case, tried that also.

I will probably end up grinding off the extra mm from the cam gear. This engine was supposed to be running around May this year... This isn't exactly the first hassle I'm facing in this rebuild. But soon, very soon...

[Steffo]

The cam sits nice and quite tight between block an retainer plate, I can hardly feel any horizontal play by hand when parts are smeared with engine oil. Luckily enough it's the flange in the front end that stops the cam from moving backwards, not the core plug in the back of the block.

I thought about the washer/shim option also, but that would obviously move the crank pulley assembly outwards so that it won't align perfectly to the rest of the pulleys. We're not talking huge distances here, but after all a bit more than 1 mm. Perhaps the alignment of the pulleys isn't that exact as standard, I'm not sure.