 |
| A degree wheel isn’t critical when extracting a camshaft, but can be a good check to make sure you’re synching it up to the crank before removal. It’s use is critical when degreeing a cam at installation. |
 |
| Procure a shop manual for your car/engine so you can get all the correct torque specs and parts placement before you start turning wrenches. |
 |
| Be sure to index and mark the distributor and its rotor’s position (as described in the text) before removing it. |
 |
Choosing A Camshaft
Selecting the right performance camshaft and the other valvetrain parts for your type of driving or racing and RPM range would take at least another article to explain. Prepare to become very friendly with the Tech Line at your camshaft company of choice when buying all the valvetrain and camshaft parts.
You’ll need to have some basic info about your engine/car combination and driving requirements before making that tech call. All the major cam manufacturers have solid tech support people (and websites) who have heard every cam and car or truck driving combination, and they are eager for you to be satisfied with the power from your purchase.
Here’s an important consideration. You’ll find most cam companies won’t cover the warranty on their new hydraulic cams unless you buy their matching and recommended hydraulic lifters, and possibly valve springs. Check with the company’s Tech Line to see what new parts have to be installed with the cam to validate their warranty. They’ll probably recommend new rocker arms, pushrods, timing gears and a timing chain, depending on the level of engine performance you’re after and how many miles are on the original engine.
Despite what you may be thinking, they are not just trying to get you to spend more money just to break your budget. It’s false economy to install a new cam and continue to
run used or worn out rotating or pushing parts it controls. The new parts are necessary for the camshaft and valvetrain to work well together for improved performance and to last.
In a typical case, you’d install what really should be considered the minimum of new parts: new camshaft, hydraulic lifters, and timing gears and chain. We’ll likely re-use the stock pushrods and rocker hardware. If you do so, after qualifying their condition, be sure to specify that to the camshaft tech line, so they will supply you with a camshaft that is compatible and not too aggressive for the re-used parts.
Timing gears wear and the chain stretches over time, so that’s one reason to replace them. Another is that the stock timing gear set may be set to retard the camshaft timing. So, re-installing these parts defeats the purpose of installing a performance camshaft in the first place. You will save money and make more power in the long run by replacing the timing gears and chain.
Start the Disassembly
Before you start turning wrenches or renting special tools, buy a shop manual for your vehicle and study the engine section. It will help you see what parts are going to have to be removed to get full access to the timing chain, lifters, and camshaft, and may offer specific advice on the basics of disassembly and assembly of the engine. Plus it will give you the torque specs for all the assembly work. We’ll present some of the basic teardown and re-assembly steps here.
At re-assembly in Part 2, we figure you’ve done it once, so we’ll concentrate on tips to help the cam and new parts live, but not go into the basic re-assembly again. We’re not throwing you completely under the bus like those “re-assembly is the reverse of assembly” lines in some manuals, but close.
We suggest you take before/after pictures as you disassemble the engine. A disposable camera is very cheap insurance to help your memory at reassembly.
We must first set the engine rotating assembly at TDC (Top Dead Center) #1 cylinder on its firing stroke, and keep it there, so when we exchange the new cam and valvetrain parts for the old ones, they are installed in the same position – correctly synced to the crankshaft. This is essential for two reasons. The engine will start right up after installation during the critical breaking-in portion of the camshaft. Second, if these parts aren’t timed correctly, then parts crash into each other and make expensive noises.