Happy Thanksgiving, all!
I promised some pics once the new/used cam drive arrived.
It appears to be an early MiniMania piece, probably from the mid 1990’s. It’s a 52 tooth belt, 3/8 pitch – seems to have been used very little and is in good shape.
Adjustment equals a little better than a full tooth – so there will be no inaccessible points on the cam timing.
A Kevlar replacement belt is on order, and while the one shipped with the piece appears to have never been used, I have no idea how old it is. A replacement belt is cheaper than pistons, valves, rods, heads – cheaper than even the head gasket, so I will not succumb to the false economy of using the old one.
The chain operates in oil – the belt does not. There are seals that separate the belt housing from the rest of the engine – both look to be unused . . .
I have two concerns regarding using this – both of which I’ll address before I install it. First off, the venting from the front of the engine that would normally exit out of the original cam cover is directed to the bung at the top of the case. The vent hole is too small to be effective – I’ll bore that out a bit . . .
And the cam pulley is stout beyond all earthly reason. It weighs in at 520 grams, which is about half again the weight of the stock piece, and about twice what the chain vernier piece weighs. As I live north of the cheddar curtain, I’ll be swissing it. It will never be as light as the other race piece, but right now, it’s simply excessively heavy.
During the dynothon, Mark and I were able to get a lot of pulls in during a short period of time. We were able to quickly determine which direction to go with jets, air horns – we even tested three different exhaust systems. I’ll point out that Fordboy was the one who put together the plan for the day, and it all hinged on both of us being loaded for bear – if we thought we might need it, we brought it.
What we weren’t able to do was adjust cam timing. The stock cover would have required virtually tearing the front end off of the engine to access the vernier timing sprocket, so we weren’t able to maximize cam timing, or even know if we had already done so.
This kit will turn that procedure into a 10 minute operation, and probably turn two days on the dyno into one. Not a bad deal at $150.00 – although I still need to make a few investments in it.
A HUGE thanks to ragergeo for pointing this out to me!
Topic: Milwaukee Midget (Read 3575914 times)