What do you suppose caused this:



Funny thing is the wear is not centered, one side shows a slight bit more wear than the other so it appears it was rotating off center somehow or the cam gear is off center.

Have not look down at the cam gear as of yet, this was enough carnage for one day. Not sure what I am going to do, might just stap another dist in there and see what happens if I do not see any damage to the cam gear. I know, wishful thinking.

 

Ouch my brotha!

I hope you get it figured out.

I have never been a fan of the ghetto-rigged LT1 setup for exactly that reason, along with the tacky t-stat setup.

Just my opinion though,

 

Isn't there supposed to be an angled shim for the dizzy?

 

Yes I believe it is supposed to be at about a 5 degree angle. I took another look at it and it looks like the wear is even but the teeth are wore all the way through on about a third of the gear, must have wore through there and stop rotating. Orig the car just up and died last Aug and I thought it was a fuel delivery problem because the pump was not kicking on. Well the fuse was blown, took me a while to figure out where it was , but then I could not get any spark so after looking at everything I could I pulled the dist and found the wear.

The intake conversion was done by the previous owner on his own, this is not one of John's intakes.

As far as ghetto, with the hood down it looks and sounds just as nice as any other Formula. Well at least it used to.

 

Please dont be insulted, I have held that view ever since I heard of the idea. If you can get it to align properly and run good then you have saved some good money and should still have a real solid performer. Its all a matter of perspective, some people hold the view that those of us who buy Superram and Miniram intakes have foolishly wasted money when there are several less expensive options out there. So none of us are ever right, lol, but if we are all happy that is all that matters in the real world, at least we all run 8 cylinders, common ground

However when the hood is open, she sure does look pretty

 

Yea, but whats up with the Flattened Out upper Rad Hose?

Bill

 

ehh, drained some coolant to add the Royal Purple additive then pulled her out of the garage, t-stat never opened and system never equilized.

I good eye will also note the loose 9th injector wires, unmounted coil, and lack of wiper motor.

Coil has since been mounted to the firewall where the hole is for the wiper motor that was discarded and the 9th injector wires have been removed.

I hope that satisfies your inquiry.

 

heres my lt1 intake looks pretty good to me and ive run it going on 3 yrs now daily driver no probs at all

 

Hey now that looks real nice too.

Do you have a pic of how you did the t-stat, that has always been a sore spot from the pics I have seen from others. I have aslo seen some real dumpy Superram setups as well. As a matter of fact, I bought my Superram upper used and it looked like it was pulled from a trash dumpster. Required some TLC and power tools to clean it up

However with as much attention to detail you paid to the other aspects of your build I imagine you have something slick to cover the t-stat setup also.

Congrats on another clean 3rd gen engine bay, nice to know some us still like to carry the torch of pride.

 

thanks heres the best pic ive got on hand ive got the t stat tucked under the brake master cylinder

 

Before you start thinking the LT1 intake conversion did this let's check some facts.

1) The distributor angle is set by the engine block alone, not the position of the intake distributor hole.

2) The distributor HEIGHT is determined by the intake (spacer on LT1 intake conversion).

3) What kind of cam are you running? A roller cam demands a special distributor gear or else abnormal wear will occur. It's hard to tell what you have in the picture.

 

Believe the cam is a Hot Cam and the dist gear looks to be bronze. I also suspected the dist height might be a possible cause.

Certainly was not blaming the intake iself, was looking more for what could have gone wrong with the conversion to cause the gear to get chewed up.

 

Just talk to guy on the vette forum I frequent and he said after he did a tpi swap he chewed up a bronze gear then went with a stock GM 89 f-body gear, no problems since. Just happens the tpi system I bought to put in my vette is from an 89 formula but have not installed it as of yet. If the cam gear checks out OK and the installation height checks out OK I am going to try that dist. Will report back.

 

i thought that looked like a bronze gear a buddy of mine chewed one up in his stang he switched it to a stock one and had no more probs good luck

 

That is what I am hoping. :crossfingers:

How hard is it to pull the oil pan, need to clean it out.

 

You will have to unbolt the motor and trans and pick em up. Then finagle around the pan, with your fingers crossed, to get it out.

A load leveler for your cherry picker helps alot in this situation.

 

YIKES! Only have to drop my steering linkage in my vette. An oil pan with a removable bottom section would the cats arz for oil pan inspection.

Thanks for the input, always makes the job easier to hear form those who have done it.

 

You will for sure want to check camshaft fore/aft movement. By the looks of things, I'd say the cam button wasn't set up tight enough. The cam would then move back and forth under load/no load conditions, which kills the dist gear.

Hot cam needs the bronze gear, otherwise the gear on the cam will wear instead. Don't put a hard dist gear on there to "fix" it.

 

Is there a diff between the hot cam gear and any other gear from a GM cam? I would assume they are made from the same cores just ground to diff specs.

I keep seeing mention of melonized gear not a bronze gear. Please direct to where you are getting your information on using a bronze instead of a melonized gear.

Thanks


http://www.gmpartsdepot.com/SB_camshaft_chart.html

 

Stock cams are cast iron = harder than steel. Roller tappet cams are made of steel (softer and usually only surface hardened on the lobes) and the integral steel cam gear is not advised with stock iron dist gears due to the fact that the cam gear would wear quicker.

Melonizing is a metal softening process. A melonized steel gear would probably be a bit harder than bronze, but still softer than the 8740 steel usually used for roller tappet cams.

 

Thanks

I'll check to see if there is excessive play in the cam.

 

Fire in the hole!

Replaced the dist gear and she fired right up. Now I need to pull the pan and clean it out. Going to run a little then pull the dist for a look see. My neighbors should be happy now that both my cars are running.