We got the cam degreed today, yay! Here's the play by play. The instructions on the WEBCam website were actually very good, once you get going. First, i bot a TDC tool from APE. Many here have explained how you can make one yourself. That's not what I'm good at, plus its a simple neat tool to own.
We bolted the degree wheel on the alternator side, using the stock alternator rotor bolt with spacers to take up the unused portion of the bolt.
MRieck says he uses a 20" wheel, mounted on the alternator side. With that diameter, he can face it towards the ignition side and read it. My little 7" disc is unreadable that way, so we had to mount it facing out, then run back and forth between the ignition side to turn the crank and the alternator side to read the wheel. Less of a problem is you were doing it on a bench and not in the frame. We used the universal piece of coathanger wire as a pointer, curled a loop in the end of it and screwed it into a cover hole.
Following the instructions with the TDC tool screwed in it became very obvious how to find TDC. True TDC matched the 1-4 TDC mark on the advancer, so that was good.
Take those two readings and divide by 2, adjust the wheel to that number, remove the TDC tool, turn the engine to 0 on the wheel. This should = "T" on the advancer and it did.
Next set up the dial indicator on the intake valve. Arrange the pointer so it is in the same plane as the valve stem, and it touches the retainer, not the adjuster (per MRieck) to get a true reading.
Follow the instructions. I couldn't get the dial set to 0. My platform wasn't quite sturdy enough. But that's not a problem, I started at 3thou, wanted 50thou, so I just take it to 53thou.
The next step just about stalled me. You're supposed to turn the engine past the high point and stop 50thou before the base circle, without backing up. Well how can you know you are 50thou before something? Just trust the dial and pay attention. The base circle will read 3 thou, so stop at 53 thou. Piece of cake.
Do the same on the exhaust:
So I did the math, etc. The timing card said the lobe centerlines should be 107.5 each. Mine were 112.5 and 114. I don't think I could get them any closer. From reading other experiences, its not trying to duplicate the timing card numbers asmuch as duplicating them relatively. Don't think we could get much closer.
Purely by accident we started the process with the cam a little forward in the sprocket slot.
Had my centerlines been further off we wold have experimented with the position in the slot. As it was, we lucked out, locktited the bolts and torques it down.
Had to use a wobbly joint to get into the bolt, but it was straigheter than in the picture and straight enough for ourpurposes.
I'm sure this explanation leaves a lot to be desired, but no point in rewriting the WebCam instructions. It was just a few fuzzy points I had to work thru. I'll be happy to explain any thing further.
MRosso was stuck with visions of valves hitting pistons. Just thought I'd throw in these pics. My 1978 vintage Yoshimura 2 ring slipper pistons I used in a roadracer. S2 (.5 mm over) = 749cc. I used a huge bump RC cam. Turns out it was kissing the piston on the exhaust side. Bike ran several 4 hour WERA endurance races and sprint races. Cam was not degreed, but it ran like heck (real good). sometimes we're just lucky I guess.
The flash washed it out, but there is an "RSC" stamped on the side of the skirts.
For posterity sake, I want to build an engine with these pistons, a real high rpm screamer and do it right.
