ok what I see is you have an end oil cover and an end oil bushing in it as well as a end oil pinion, and many run out in the fit to the center of the pinion to bushing location - it can be corrected as we have the correct tool, and you come in from inside the engine case to the cam cover using the cases pinion bushing and center both to one another -- now buying a generic cam cover and not having it machined at the same time to one another ( engine cases ) is just causing even more issues

at the beginning of AMF they did things like this with the cover - changing - the engine oiling system and making a special bushing to retro fit a the 2 year cover so it could be continued, and not adding an A to the end showing that a change was made - they did fix that as they went along in the learning how to build motorcycles

what I did see is the breather valve end play was incorrect as the face if the cam cover has a deep rub on it from the no end play - we set these at .010 or as close to that as one can measure using an old gasket that is compressed, and using the exact same type of gasket going back on - you can take a straight edge across the engine gasket to breather shim and measure it that way

a noise could have been the breather end play or lack of hard to tell not hearing it -- what is normal and what is something different

 

the cam bushing shows wear that would indicate the cam shaft was angled into it, not fitting straight into it.
wear on the upper half of the outward facing shoulder, and inner shaft wear on the lower half of the bushing.
I get what your saying about the breather, but the uneven cam bushing wear would seem to be more significant.

The side hole in the cam bushing made me think it was a side oiler cam cover, along with the -70 part number.

 

it comes down to this - if you have no lifter noise hot at idle then the oil pressure loss is not as bad as you think the wear actually is

a real experienced shop in shovels would be needed that is heavily tooled as well - to correct some of the AMF stuff we have seen that is and has not really been that bad now 40 years later and still running

 

It runs great, but the whining noise is really bad. So bad that it gets embarrassing when people always ask what's wrong with it.
sounds like a street rod with a blower.

 

primary bearing on the trans mainshaft will also do that

 

good tip, but replaced that already.

I still think the uneven cam bushing wear is the tell-tale sign.
New cam cover goes on later today.

 

Keep us posted... as we have one in the shop that has an unfound Whine...
Just always assumed the poor thing was less than happy with it's Owner!!!!!

 

stator will also become noisy in a whine sound - un plug the regulator

transmission ( countershaft ) will also have a while sound when the counter shaft rollers are digging into the shaft and gear

 

I'm looking closely now at the breather gear wear on the cover that you pointed out. Do you think that, by itself, could cause a significant whining sound?

 

with the cover installed the breather would have been in a stall as by hand you would not be able to turn it -- so yea