In the middle of the process myself right now....

 

Good stuff if someone does not want to pay Cushman or MHS for getting it done.

 

That's a pretty good video.

The only thing I don't agree with is his claim on how much adjustment you get from moving the cam gears, he says 3 to 4 degrees but without grinding the keyway tab on the gear you only get about 1.5 degrees total adjustment range

 

CalBoy makes a good point however, that’s assuming the cam gear was all the way counter clockwise when first tightened which probably wasn’t the case and I said there was not a lot of slop on the left gear. Since this car is a project mule, I decided to test the right cam off camera, knowing that gear had a bit more play. With the right gear tightened in both the full CW and in the full CCW position, I got a 108* and 111* reading. Given that results, I believe a 3 degree variance may not be uncommon.

 

Job well done! Looks like you might have done that a time or two. Have you had a chance to run the car to see how it did?

 

I hope to take it to VMP next Friday.

 

While we are looking at the top of the 4.6L, many of you have likely seen my companion video on installing a PI intake on a non-PI engine https://youtu.be/Q3aTGbuCMQg

 

Awesome video. Makes me anxious to degree the cams when I build my Teksid 2V motor...

 

Cam Gears

As far as how many degrees you can get with out filing the keys is concerned depends on manufacturing tolerances. I degreed a 04 cobra this week and moved the passenger exhaust cam 5 degrees with out touching the key. I did a 2 valve on time that was out 21 degrees to start. On that one I had to back the drivers side up one tooth and advance the passenger side 4 degrees. The car came that way from the factory. I have never had to file unless I had more than 5 degrees to correct side to side difference.

 

One more comment, you'll see guys degreeing the cams using a welded collapsed lifter.

But this puts some valve lash into the picture. It turns out that because of the rocker arm geometry used on these heads that valve lash will give you some error on the timing measurement.

In my case I was seeing over 1 degree difference when using a lifter with extra lash compared to using an adjustable lifter that lets you take all the lash out.

The TFS adjustable lifter works pretty well, MHS and Summit sell them.

One other gotcha on cam timing, if you are running TFS heads you have to use cams designed for those heads, using standard PI cams causes your lobe separation and lift curves to be wrong, for the full story on this see:

Important info for guys running TFS heads - Forums at Modded Mustangs

 

I finally got my cams all squared away, took some time getting together all the proper tools to get accurate measurements.

The biggest pain in the ass for me was getting the dial indicator to not jump around so much, probably because they are garbage indicators, but still... not fun.....







Those are CMS stage 1 cams... says to set them at 110 ICL. Bank 2 came in at 106, and bank 1 at 108. I was able to get bank 2 right at 110, but the closest I could get with bank 1 was 109.5, and thats ok for me.