tbanzer

What weight oil are you running and what is your oil pressure. Just throwing that out there. Excessive load from oil pump will do the same thing.

ezstriper

you need to talk to whoever did the cam..find out what they say...not all billet cores are the same....Bob M should help on this to....but some cams I have gotten(like comp) say bronze gear only....they are recommending their composite one now as well....I just got a pair of billet cores from Bob and sent gears with the cams to use...so you cannot just go with what GM, Merc or whoever....need to find out what that cam required.

fbc25el

Same here Bob sent the gear with my billet cam.

Budman II

ez, this was simply a GM / Merc magnum billet cam that had the lobes reground to slightly decrease the base circle and thus increase lift and also duration on the exhaust side. Nothing was done to the gear for the distributor, so it is exactly like all the other magnum cams out there (rollers, that is). Might try the Comp composite gear, but have seen some complaints about those disintegrating as well. I guess the good thing in this case is that is would not send a bunch of metal through the oil pump and other engine parts.

Budman II

tbanzer, I am running 20W50 conventional oil. Wix / NAPA Gold filter. Oil pressure was around 60 - 75 lb cold, and 45 - 60 hot.

MER Performance

A NAPA gold filter, is just to small a a micron, I think it's like 32, a Wix Racing is 62 micron, I think. If you have a Merc cam, use the Merc part # I gave you.
Regroup all your information, what has failed, questionable parts, and get game plan to cover anything in question. If you have bearing issues, it's not a good start from what I see.
If all the machining is done correct and your clearances are checked, everything is clean, without a doubt. Your parts are within service limits and the assembly is done properly, there should be no problems.

fbc25el

Did you use cam break in lube on the gears?

ezstriper

ok, as far as I know the merc cams used a stock iron gear, BUT after they re-ground the cam they would have to re-hardened it...now what do you use now ??? I'm running a HP500 cam with a stock MSD iron gear...but also does not look like the gear was riding at correct height ??what block/dist ?

Budman II

Hey EZ - I think the blue motors were running Crane cams, so I have no idea what gear those call for. Melonized gears are also iron - they just have some type of special process done to them to give them and extra hard coating so they can live riding against a billet steel gear.

I agree that the wear pattern looks a bit low on the gear. I am running a Performer RPM Air Gap on a stock GM Gen VI block with 088 cast iron heads. Nothing special was done to the block or heads - block was decked just enough to square things up and get the proper quench on the pistons, and heads were milled a little bit for cleanup. I did not have to do any mods to the intake to get things to line up, IIRC.

Right now my plan of action is to pull and cut open the oil filter that is on the block - see my other thread. If there are no show stoppers waiting for me in there, then I will go back to addressing the distributor gear issue. I might get one of the Comp Cams composite gears and try to run a wear pattern check on it, and check it again towards the end of the season. I am seriously contemplating pulling this engine over the winter and give it a meticulous inspection, just so hopefully I can correct any issues before they get serious and run stress free next summer. Yeah, right - stress free - what am I thinking?

Thanks for the ideas!

ezstriper

I know some came were 2 piece billet core, pressed on gear end so they could run a std gear...I just not sure which ones, but some of the merc ones were that way....give Bob @ marine kninetics a call...he's the man on this stuff !!! good luck ! Rob