Cam gear with oil pump shaft removed.

Slightly different view of cam gear.

Bronze gear wear pattern from one direction of rotation...

Bronze gear wear pattern from the other direction...

There seems to be a lot of optical reflection on the bronze gear. Hard to determine if there is significant cause for concern. What are the dry spots on the cam gear? They almost look like the bronze gear is chattering on the cam. May be just optics also. Can you visually see the same patterns in the gears that are displayed in the pics?

I posted the first set of pics to highlight the wear/contact areas in direct light.

These next ones were taken without flash (ambient florescent light), FWIW.

And...

I don't like the looks of the wear in the bushing.

I’d put a few hundred miles on it, then look at the gear again.

The teeth on the cam gear don’t have the nice chamfer on them like cams of days gone by, but at least they don’t have a sharp edge.

That is an odd looking mark on the bushing, did you use the installation tool and burnish it?

Joe

That could be the issue I have. The new bushing i put in went in easy and the install tool was easy to pull out.

Looks as if the gear meshing forces are pushing the intermediate shaft forward.

Could the geometry of the cam or shaft gear be off somehow??
Was the oil pump allowed to find it's alignment with the shaft before tightening??

Just thinking out loud...

Joe

PS, if the intermediate shaft gear was pinned to the shaft a little high or low??
Can you measure and compare?

Brad here’s one I pulled out of the hemi after a couple years. Hard to see but it was slowly wearing into the teeth. You can see how the what I call edge is worn from looking down from top. The edges are very sharp and there’s a little burr on the bottom edge. This is a solid roller with a melling HV pump. I changed to a melonized gear from Hughes a couple of years ago and pulled it out last fall and it and the cam showed zero wear. I know they say never use on a used cam but never say never I’ve didn’t have any problems.

Mike

Can't recall which of the last three shops that have had their hands on my block are responsible for the bushing installation. Fair to presume that isn't a job one does AFTER the bottom end has been reassembled?

I'd been wondering if I should pull the cam and add the bevel to the gear teeth before putting it all back together...

I have other oil pump shaft & gear assemblies for comparison, in case the MP piece shown above isn't "right" for some reason.

Cam gear and the melonized gear holding up, despite going against two of the warnings for using the melonized gear?

As long as you have the gear out, check the cam's forward movement once more to
see if the cam button is holding the right clearance.

Joe

Cam gear and the melonized gear holding up, despite going against two of the warnings for using the melonized gear? [/quote]

Yep They also say not to use the bronze gear with a HV pump so kinda between a rock and a hard place. Dave told me if I was going to use it on a used cam to remove and totally clean the cam first but I couldn't see anything to clean off so I just installed it. Very few miles on this cam. I'm sure if you had an old cam with excessive wear it might eat the gear. If I was selling them I would put warnings on them too but years ago I talked to a crane tech and he told me they never saw any problems running a steel gear on a BB Mopar roller with a standard oil pump but the chevy and ford had trouble,so who knows for sure?

One of the reasons I'm so interested in this thread is we have a 505 similar build ready for
the dyno, so this bronze gear topic has always been a nagging question.

Our old stuff has hydraulic/flat tappet so this is new territory.

Joe

Give Dave Hughes a call. 309 745 9558. Don't be surprised he'll probably tell you you don't need a HV pump and not to use a bronze gear. He isn't shy. Lol

Hey Brad...I think there was a thread over on ST several years ago by now where a guy was having issues with gear wear and they eventually found the gear on the cam was ground incorrectly. That's IF my memory isn't jacked up. May be worth a search over there just to verify what I recall.

Also, you can change the bushing without a taking it apart. The best bet for that bushing is to just eat the money for the correct bushing tool and buy the undersized bushing. The tool then installs the bushing and sizes the I.D. at the same time and you don't have to worry about the bushing being loose. I fought that for awhile. Then I bought the tool and stopped using the pre-sized bushings.