I need a custom timing chain, please Help!!

2

2GNS4ME

Active Member
Joined
Jun 3, 2001
According to my machine shop, stock block center to center from the Crank bore to Cam bore is 4.335. On my block it’s 4.418. There is +.083 difference. This is an early On Center Stage II motor that was initially built by Ruggles. I was told by a very reliable source that Mr. Ruggles himself told him that he had moved the cam bore up slightly in few motors when the cam bore was machined initially for clearances purpose. Initially, this motor was setup with a Gear drive setup and ran about 4500 miles with the previous owner. Since then, he pulled out the motor and refreshed it and went to a smaller hydraulic roller cam. Well I bought the whole setup as a project and I want to go with a chain instead of the gear drive that’s on it already, especially with all the gear drive issues people are talking about. This is a street car with a 224/224 276cui hydraulic roller cam setup. Has anyone ever run into this problem? I am sure there might be other motors out there with similar issues.


Any help greatly appreciated. This project has been dragging due to a new born that putting everything on hold but now I want to get her done!
 
If you had the correct gear drive on there you would be ok. They arent all the same. Trying to find a chain/cam gear for that application isnt going to be easy. Its not uncommon to have a raised cam bore in a high revving stroked Buick stage 2.
 
I'd just run the gear drive and be done with it. They work fine. I agree with Bison that you probably won't find a chain the proper length. As far as the raised cam bore goes most Stage blocks didn't have this. Is the block still machined for Buick size cam bearings?

Neal
 
750H.P.V6 said:
I'd just run the gear drive and be done with it. They work fine. I agree with Bison that you probably won't find a chain the proper length. As far as the raised cam bore goes most Stage blocks didn't have this. Is the block still machined for Buick size cam bearings?

Neal
Click to expand...


Yes, it still has the stock size cam bearings; the other problem we have is the mesh part of the cam gear into the cam sensor gear. Since the cam is moved up in the block, the gear on the cam is going to dig more into the cam sensor gear. We are also running a newer front cover with high volume oil pump. What Ruggles did with the old front cover was he bored out the cam sensor bore and re bushed it, thus moving the cam sensor up and closer to the block then chamfered that oil pump shaft since it wasn't aligned with the cam sensor any longer.





Everyone is at a panic stage after a good friend of ours lost his motor with gear drive after about 40 passes at the track, two or so dyno pulls and about 200 street miles. None of the anchor bolts for the Gear drive came loose but one head part of the 7 bolts I believe that holds the Cam sprocket, the head of the bolt broke and fell into the idler and jammed everything up. This was the needle bearing setup idler with the 3 bolt setup. The gear drive one the engine with the cam bore moved up is also a 3 bolt needle bearing idler setup. I understand that the single bolt ball bearing idler is preferred by most people but they are hard to find.



Everyone that I talked to is going back to the harmonics as the cause, they are stating that all the bolts will come loose with the gear drive setup due to that yet, all the bolts in that engine that one of my buddies lost were super tight when he took them off. Was it a freak thing that one of the head of the bolt broke and fell into the idler to jam it up? We don't know! Was it the harmonics that made the head of the bolt break off? We don't know that either. I know Allan, ( TurboBitt) here on the board has 3500 miles or so with gear drive, stage II headed car and reported 0 issues.
TIA
Prasad



 
Why don't you try giving Dan a call at DLS since he is kind of local to us and see what he would recommend for you. DLS #1-219-956-3653

Steve
 
WIKEDV6 said:
Yes, it still has the stock size cam bearings; the other problem we have is the mesh part of the cam gear into the cam sensor gear. Since the cam is moved up in the block, the gear on the cam is going to dig more into the cam sensor gear. We are also running a newer front cover with high volume oil pump. What Ruggles did with the old front cover was he bored out the cam sensor bore and re bushed it, thus moving the cam sensor up and closer to the block then chamfered that oil pump shaft since it wasn't aligned with the cam sensor any longer.





Everyone is at a panic stage after a good friend of ours lost his motor with gear drive after about 40 passes at the track, two or so dyno pulls and about 200 street miles. None of the anchor bolts for the Gear drive came loose but one head part of the 7 bolts I believe that holds the Cam sprocket, the head of the bolt broke and fell into the idler and jammed everything up. This was the needle bearing setup idler with the 3 bolt setup. The gear drive one the engine with the cam bore moved up is also a 3 bolt needle bearing idler setup. I understand that the single bolt ball bearing idler is preferred by most people but they are hard to find.



Everyone that I talked to is going back to the harmonics as the cause, they are stating that all the bolts will come loose with the gear drive setup due to that yet, all the bolts in that engine that one of my buddies lost were super tight when he took them off. Was it a freak thing that one of the head of the bolt broke and fell into the idler to jam it up? We don't know! Was it the harmonics that made the head of the bolt break off? We don't know that either. I know Allan, ( TurboBitt) here on the board has 3500 miles or so with gear drive, stage II headed car and reported 0 issues.
TIA
Prasad
Click to expand...

I've seen belts and chains take out stuff also.
 
Everyone has me scared of the gear drive but I've seen couple of people on the board who have them with no problem.
 
bison said:
I've seen belts and chains take out stuff also.
Click to expand...


Yep I guess at this point there in no actual cure for what we are trying to accomplish, take a race engine and make 800+ RWHP and drive on the street. We have a car that made four 8.XX passes and 2 dyno pull with a brand new Pro Gear chain. Took the motor out to look everything over and guess what? The chain was ready to fall off. There are only few companies that make the chain sets so who do you trust? Rollmaster? Cloyes? I don't what TA sells.
Prasad
 
WIKEDV6 said:
Yep I guess at this point there in no actual cure for what we are trying to accomplish, take a race engine and make 800+ RWHP and drive on the street. We have a car that made four 8.XX passes and 2 dyno pull with a brand new Pro Gear chain. Took the motor out to look everything over and guess what? The chain was ready to fall off. There are only few companies that make the chain sets so who do you trust? Rollmaster? Cloyes? I don't what TA sells.
Prasad
Click to expand...

I've been running a rollmaster in my street car but the springs are only 510lbs over the nose. I'm not sure where the threshold is. I don't see 600 being a problem. When you get into some of these really fast ramp lobes reliability of the
Valvetrain goes to chit really quickly if everything isn't perfect and even then there's no guarantee. I'd look into a mild solid lobe and run the same style gear drive turbo bitt does. You can sacrifice some ramp and add duration if you need it. Reliability will go up.
 
bison said:
I've been running a rollmaster in my street car but the springs are only 510lbs over the nose. I'm not sure where the threshold is. I don't see 600 being a problem. When you get into some of these really fast ramp lobes reliability of the
Valvetrain goes to chit really quickly if everything isn't perfect and even then there's no guarantee. I'd look into a mild solid lobe and run the same style gear drive turbo bitt does. You can sacrifice some ramp and add duration if you need it. Reliability will go up.
Click to expand...
I called anybody and everybody that I know from East Coast to West Coast no one has the single bolt ball bearing style gear drive. I have one but I am hanging on to it for my motor. Please let me know if anyone has one.

Thanks
Prasad
 
Is there anyone here that knows how to get a hold of Mr. Ruggles? I know he is pretty much out of everything but it's worth a try!
TIA
Prasad
 
Many times the front bolt failure on billet cams is due to the fuel pump eccentric cracking from torquing the front bolt. Machine up a new one outta steel and it will work better. I think you are in the need for a belt driven oil pump, as pump shaft alignment is going to be a huge issue with the raised cam. There is ZERO source for a heavy duty timing chain in a Buick V6. They ALL have to be checked very often with a mechanical roller cam. Cam sensor could be changed to a Series II style with a little thought. (located in the timing cover face and reads a flying magnet on the cam gear.) Getting the cam sensor to align with the cam gear is gonna be tricky, too. Just shimming it will not work. It'll take a bit of "Trig" to get it figured out. (I can barely spell triginometry, but I have some really smart engineers that I work with that do it in their sleep) Might be easier to remachine the block back to stock dementions and machine some bearing spacers and press them in the block and then hone to size. Then you can use a stock timing chain and stock oil pump. No need for high volume, either. The last StageII I built had 125+ psi at idle with a high volume TA external feed pump cover. (had a by-pass port timing issue that I had to hand machine to fix) Control internal oil leaks and you can run alot less volume.
Yep, maybe DLS has a solution for you. A phone call would be a good place to start.
 
Prasad,

I think a lot of the opinions on gear drive set ups aren't well founded. Buick V6's have been run for many years in all forms of motorsports with gear drives on them. If they were problematic no one would have used them in competition to start with. I know Allan G has had a gear drive on his street car for 10 years with no issues. As far as the bolt head coming off bolts don't just fail for no reason. It was either a defective bolt to start with or it was over torqued and failed as a result.

The block you have doesn't sound like it wasn't modified by Ruggles rather it was machined by Buick with a raised cam bore to start with. The only way this could have been done after the fact is if it had be bushed to a smaller size then relocated or if it had been offset machined for a bearing insert with a larger O.D. I'm not sure how to fix the cam sensor alignment issue without a lot of work. What happened to the original front cover? Can you still use it? BTW, I have a couple of gear drives if you need one.

Neal
 
It's possible that Ruggles had some un-machined blocks, too. He did alot of development for GM back in the beginning of the StageII program. Rocker/pushrod geometry will be affected, too. This sounds FUN!! The more challenging the better.
 
hope this helps call Don Cruz he runs a 1500 hp raised cam 4.1 but he will probably want yo buy your block great guy he will help you 813 486 0081
 
Left the gear drive in with a modified cover. Couldn't find a vendor that made a timing chain that fit.
 
Camarosnake said:
So the gear drive worked? Do you have pics of it... where did you get it... I am a little lost here at the moment.
Click to expand...


The motor was setup with the gear drive initially from Ruggles. It had over 4K miles when the previous owner decided to go with a different cam and pistons and all that. While in the process he gave up and sold it to Denny (2GNS4ME). We took the motor to our builder and looked to replace the gear drive with the chain but had no luck finding the proper chain so we had the motor put back together with the Gear drive it originally came with. The motor was just dropped in and it will be fired up as soon as we get some parts that we’re waiting on.



What seem to be your problem?
Prasad

 
WIKEDV6 said:
The motor was setup with the gear drive initially from Ruggles. It had over 4K miles when the previous owner decided to go with a different cam and pistons and all that. While in the process he gave up and sold it to Denny (2GNS4ME). We took the motor to our builder and looked to replace the gear drive with the chain but had no luck finding the proper chain so we had the motor put back together with the Gear drive it originally came with. The motor was just dropped in and it will be fired up as soon as we get some parts that we’re waiting on.



What seem to be your problem?
Prasad
Click to expand...

I found a gear drive that looks similar so going to see if it fits... if it doesn't I am not sure where I buy the gear drive for the engine... I am picking it up later today and will look at it and see.
 
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