Cam Identification
I have none of those things. My plan is to get the Andrews undersized gear for this cam and have our indy press it in, new gears are cheap. That way, I can keep the original Crane just incase I need to return to zero.
HDF Community Team
Joined: Dec 2005
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From: NC USA
Good call on the Crane possibly having the bikes original gear. Didn't even dawn on me to look back at the pics. Yes, does look OEM.
You cannot correctly measure a gear with calipers, plus you need .108 pins to do it. Using an undersized Andrews gear without knowing (remove and measuring) the pinion gear is a crap shoot at best. End up with a "small" mismatch and you'll have a very noisy engine. Been there, done that too many times.
Best move is to take both cams to the indy and have the old gear pressed onto the new cam and call it done.
You cannot correctly measure a gear with calipers, plus you need .108 pins to do it. Using an undersized Andrews gear without knowing (remove and measuring) the pinion gear is a crap shoot at best. End up with a "small" mismatch and you'll have a very noisy engine. Been there, done that too many times.
Best move is to take both cams to the indy and have the old gear pressed onto the new cam and call it done.
I'm taking it over tonight. I talked to him and he's reluctant to reuse an OEM gear that has already been pressed onto an aftermarket cam to put onto yet another cam, and I'm fine with that. He's going to measure it out for me and we can go from there.
Got it back a couple days ago and after talking with the Indy, the Andrews cam is slightly bigger than the OEM and could be what's causing the binding, but without bringing the bike up there and getting a hands-on investigation it's just speculation at this point. In his opinion, the differences in the Crane vs Andrews cams are so minor that you're not gaining much if anything by swapping it out for the Andrews. So to save me some headache and to hopefully start to wrap up this adventure, I'm just going to pop the Crane back in and install the quickies to call it a day. Maybe later this year I'll get a compression test done and look at the valve springs, and see about trying a slightly more aggressive cam that works with those heads. I did enjoy my first dive into a cam chest and learned a lot so that hopefully if I go back in, I'll be better prepared. Thanks again everyone for your wisdom and insight.
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Update .... IT LIVES!
After getting back from a 2 week vacation to Italy, I put the cam back in and installed the quickies at 24 flats as per instructions and she fired right up. Sounds better than before I think, I did notice the rear cylinder seems to be putting out more "forceful" exhaust if that makes sense, might have something to do with that possibly mis-adjusted push rod before I dove into it. Pretty proud of myself for my first camchest adventure.
https://photos.app.goo.gl/y7cj1bcoipGcQevN7
After getting back from a 2 week vacation to Italy, I put the cam back in and installed the quickies at 24 flats as per instructions and she fired right up. Sounds better than before I think, I did notice the rear cylinder seems to be putting out more "forceful" exhaust if that makes sense, might have something to do with that possibly mis-adjusted push rod before I dove into it. Pretty proud of myself for my first camchest adventure.
https://photos.app.goo.gl/y7cj1bcoipGcQevN7
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