I know I can be a hot head, but not mad at all on this.
First; Bill wanted me to appologize about taking so long to get back, but he is running 40 pair, or 80 heads at the moment, and that has been keeping him tied up.
Bill also said that everything Shoe said was pretty much spot on.
Bill said in regaurds to the poston 10/21/08:
1) I didn't start this idea of producing more parts to save money, it was Henry Ford that came up with the idea of the assembly line.
2) I'm looking for good quality parts for me, at a fair price, so I can put my old car back together and race it.
3) Jim Baillaro has been producing the ENTIRE sprocket set for sometime and that is why I went with him.
4) Some have went with machining a 391 truck timing set for the crank to stub cam sprocket set, but the material is not there and these sprockets are 0.100 to narrow on the back side. Jim has the orriginal Ford drawings and already knew this and had sprockets made with this material already there, further, when enlarging the hole for the large sprocket to fit on the stub cam, it removes too much material and leaves the premanufactured 391 sprocket pin to close to the hole for the stub cam press fit causing problems with the pin.
5) I want to make alot to get where we pay by the pound for material instead of paying by the piece so we can get the price down on these closer to $500 a COMPLETE set, instead of the $900 that guys are having to pay now from vendors for a PARTIAL set.
6) Bill has seen problems with some of the parts out there, he said; A buddy of mine got a morris industrial chain sprocket set from Sandiego Butch that the dowel pin holes were 0.004 to small to fit the cam pins in. Those gears did not have the propper flange chamfer or "flange radius" and were dead soft with no heat treat. The orriginal spec sheets call for the sprockets to be made from 8620 with the propper heat treat.
7) Jim Baillaro has performed tensile strength tests on the 0.222 chains and got a tensile strength of 4,000 pounds on the new chains compaired to 3,000 pound tensile strength on orriginal ford spec chains.
8) Bill said they will have all the tensile strength specs on all of the chains available before the first set is sold. Bill further hopes eventually to get to a complete true roller chain sprocket set, but if that happens, they will be fully tested on the street and at the track before any are sold to the public.
From Roger:
To address some of the comments about a gilmer belt drive settup for the cams.
1) IMHO in dealing with Gilmer belt drives on supercharged cars, they stretch even more then a chain!! Yes, they would offer less resistance, but stretch on a belt that long would be a timing nightmare.
2) Some of the guys like John V. who has more street miles than anyone can weigh in here, but it has been my experience that a gilmer belt would require more tourque on the belt then a chain, and I have seen alot of Cammer cams with the first bearing wiped out on the left bank from guys running the chain too tight, and I believe this would be compounded by the tourque needed to keep from throwing the belt at high rpm while tring to maintain timing.
Mainly my comment is meant not that anyone's chain was better or worse. It is more about always having a better product that is easy to get and affodable. We all know that NOS Gears work, but hard to get. Jims gears are better than stock and will probably be cheaper with a huge order. Out here, it was chosen to do the More readily available/ more common pitch set up. My Diamond Chain rep syas it over 4000 lbs too, but the weak link will be somewhere else.
I am tying by the looks of things to do the opposite parts from everyone else or Bill, so that we can work as a team and get all the other parts we need. There is no need to Duplicate parts. We each have our own manufacturing talents. No need to hurt fealings, just cominicate well a work toward a single goal. More Cammer Parts.
