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Crane provided alignment pins to assist with getting things lined up correctly. I'm sure pins could be made to do the same thing.
Paul
Paul, Crane uses a narrow woodruff key on their cams and gears, other cams use 1/4" notch. The gear in the instruction sheet is (was) a Crane special order and designed for advancing the cam timing (I forget how many degrees) and the special pin won't work on any other brand because of it's narrow profile.
Here is a photo of a Crane gear being installed on an Andrews. You can see how far off the keyway is cut in the gear, compared to the correctly marked gear. Fuzzy pic, but trust me it's correct. So putting a Crane gear on any other cam is not problem, but putting any other brand cam gear onto onto a Crane will alter the timing greatly.
Let me clarify and maybe recant - that is a gear off a Screamin Eagle SEH-1 (made by Crane) so there's the chance they were made to HD specs and possible that everything I just claimed was b.s. but who uses a Crane in an Evo any more anyway...
Last edited by t150vej; Sep 8, 2022 at 04:31 PM.
Reason: clarify
I can't remember who it was but, I do recall a year or two ago a guy posted on here a clever way of marking the gear by using some wire and spray paint. It was thin wire, and he wrapped it somehow and shot it with a little spray paint marking the original keyway location on the gear.
Wish I could explain it better but it was very clever and looked accurate. I just used a sharpee...
EDIT: Found the thread. Lots of good tips on this thread, page 3 is the wire trick I mentioned previously:
I personally subscribe to the Hot gear cold cam, method.
And am in the process of putting a gear on with the cam purposely advanced 1/4 of a tooth.. believing that is close to 4 degrees..as I think 1 tooth is 16 degrees... too much for my needs..
I guess I need to get my lazy Butt to counting the darn teeth!!!!
Nope... I am always guessing...1974 Shovelhead.. 42 teeth.. more like 8.6 degrees.. but...cam turns 1/2 speed... so.... I'm back to roughly 17 degrees... of Crank rotation..
Still going with 1/4 of a tooth advanced..
quick question.. I've just about got it back together. After I got the cam and breather out, I found two small white pieces of plastic in the bottom of the gear case. I can't think of where they may have come from. The engine ran very well outside of a whine. That may have just been me not used to stock pipes, but I figured while I'm down with a bum leg, id take care of it.
Anyway, this is what I found.
I can't think of anything that looks like that in the valve train. My suspicion is it could be melted/solidified goo from the old ignition pickup, but I was on the wrong side of the gear cover.
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