measuring piston to deck clearance on 440 source dished piston

[Paul_G]

Straight up is a bad term, but dot-to-dot is worthless.

Lets see, dot on the cam gear gear is aligned with the dot (0) on the crank gear. no advance, no retard. Been like that forever.

 

[BSB67]

If you don’t measure it, you don’t know where it is. Saying “Dot to Dot” equals “I don’t know”.

 

[Paul_G]

If you don’t measure it, you don’t know where it is. Saying “Dot to Dot” equals “I don’t know”.

Understood. Degreeing the cam looks like rocket science to most people, me included. Special tools are needed, which a lot of people do not have. Thats why the average person lines them up dot to dot and done. It is a starting point.

I have to dig deeper with this engine. I have a degree kit. I am learning how to use it. I do not want to open this engine up again in the future to find burnt pistons and carnage. That gets real expensive. What frosts my nuts is I paid a pro shop to build this for me. Yet here I am doing it again myself.

 

[BSB67]

Sounds like you’re on the right path.

 

[PRHeads]

Just to be clear, about the only disassembly required to determine the cam timing is pulling a valve cover and the rockers off.

If all the front accessories are on, you’ll also need to remove enough stuff to mount the degree wheel and pointer(unless you have a damper with 360* markings).

 

[Paul_G]

The engine is on a stand. Heads are still off. I am done playing with it, just setting the ICL back to 108. I played with the timing set till I finally just mapped out the different positions. Put some match marks on the block and cam gear to see how much the gear was actually moving in each position, and in what direction. That helped. R8 is where I get the closest to 108. To go with more retard I will have to start playing with offset keys. How it came out;
Dot to dot - 115 ICL.
R4 - 110 ICL
R6 - 109 ICL
R8 - 108 ICL

This is a Summit brand timing set. Makes no sense as to why each position from R4 to R8 is only 1°? I did not bother trying R2 position.

I have a Summit brand graduated harmonic balance on it too. Sliding it on the crank I noticed the outer sleeve with the timing marks on it can slide around. Not having much faith anymore in Summit branded products.