Re: I know nothing (archive)

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In Reply to: I know nothing posted by James Patton on December 22, 2001 at 16:42:15:

One question I have is: Was the cam gear (Dinan) designed for the Dinan chip or just as a timing advance? And how would the Conforti chip work without the cam gear?

The Dinan chip is designed to work with the cam gear. The gear retards the exhaust cam, causing much improved low end torque, but sacrifices 1 hp at the top end. Dinan's chip works with this and that is why you only felt the top end with the chip. Dinan found that to make the motor more efficient throughout the rev range that this combination was better than just purely using a chip. Conforti on the other hand was just into making chips so his chip works to increase throughout the rev range without the addition of the cam gear. My thought would be that if you ran a cam gear and a Conforti chip then you would probably have lots of low end torque, but you would start to loose on the high end because it wouldn't have the timing optimized for the retardation of the exhaust cam.

I don't know but believe the cam gear was designed for the Dinan chip (may have only read this in advertising). I also don't know how the Conforti chip would work without the cam gear.

Also, do you simply have to remove the valve cover to replace the cam gear or is it much more involved?

No it is much more involved than that. This is because of the design of the motor. The cam gear sits behind the upper timing chain cover and so you will need to remove the valve cover and the distributer cap and rotor and the upper timing chain cover to get at it. Then you need to make sure everything is TDC. Then you will need to remove the pressure on the chain. You can do this one of two ways. The first is that you can actually loosen the tensionor, but I don't like that idea. I personally have a friend pull the chain with his hands off of the exhaust gear so you can pull the old one out and put the new one in. Then I suggest making sure as many times as makes you happy that the motor is all at TDC. That means the bottom end, the intake cam and the exhaust cam. Oh yeah, one tip hear is to put a mark on the head and on the cam itself to show you where it should be, but remember the exhaust marks won't line up directly after you are done. Hope this helps.

Again, I don't know the answer to this question as this work was performed prior to my purchasing the vehicle.

Now that I'm feeling pretty useless and basically am sure that I don't know anything I'll move on. I suspect that there will be others on this board who can provide you the information you need. Good Luck
James

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