thanks for putting up the pics, I been wanting to do that over a year ago but I am too stupid to finger out the how to get my pics on here.

You can see how easy it is to block and why no special part is needed, just anything to keep it from moving. You can also degree it and adjust it with shims on either side of the vane to get it exactly where you want it, you only need to block or shim one but it wont hurt to block all the vanes.

I am curious how much it was retarding the cam with the solenoid un-plugged? Seems you could use that to your advantage as a lot of times a cam workes better advanced at low speed and retarded a few degrees as the RPM go up.