• Hi everyone,

    As you all know, Coffee (Dean) passed away a couple of years ago. I am Dean's ex-wife's husband and happen to have spent my career in tech. Over the years, I occasionally helped Dean with various tech issues.

    When he passed, I worked with his kids to gather the necessary credentials to keep this site running. Since then (and for however long they worked with Coffee), Woodschick and Dirtdame have been maintaining the site and covering the costs. Without their hard work and financial support, CafeHusky would have been lost.

    Over the past couple of weeks, I’ve been working to migrate the site to a free cloud compute instance so that Woodschick and Dirtdame no longer have to fund it. At the same time, I’ve updated the site to a current version of XenForo (the discussion software it runs on). The previous version was outdated and no longer supported.

    Unfortunately, the new software version doesn’t support importing the old site’s styles, so for now, you’ll see the XenForo default style. This may change over time.

    Coffee didn’t document the work he did on the site, so I’ve been digging through the old setup to understand how everything was running. There may still be things I’ve missed. One known issue is that email functionality is not yet working on the new site, but I hope to resolve this over time.

    Thanks for your patience and support!

Foolproof Cam Timing

dfeckel

Husqvarna
AA Class
COFFEE EDIT - Link to discussion thread:
http://www.cafehusky.com/forums/showthread.php?p=35988


I posted up a little how-to on TT a while ago, but I didn't take pictures at the time. I had the head off recently to have my intake valves redone by Dave Hopkins (thanks, Dave!), and I took a few pictures to make that old how-to a lot clearer. Here ya go!



I finished reinstalling the head yesterday, and I have a couple more observations about assuring the cam timing is correct. It turns out you don't need to mark anything before pulling it all apart--all the marks are there for you already.

There are already some marks on the cam sprocket. The TWO marks on the gear portion of the cam sprocket align with the line on the head to indicate TDC.

Here is the tricky bit I figured out. When at TDC, the OTHER marks on the gear portion of the cam sprocket align with the marks on the cam gears!! The thing is, you can't SEE them aligning at TDC--your vision is obstructed by the head casting. Here's how to use those marks.

1. With the cams out, get the cam sprocket and timing chain reinstalled with the front chain slider and tensioner installed. You probably don't need the tensioner installed for this, but I wanted the maximum accuracy when verifying TDC. With the spark plug out, put something with a long, smooth, thin handle (like an hex wrench) into the spark plug hole so it is resting on the top of the piston. This is your TDC indicator.



Carefully move the engine through a few revolutions to verify the TWO marks align with the mark on the head when the hex wrench stops moving upwards. When you are satisfied that the cam sprocket and timing chain are properly installed, move on to step 2.

2. Use the kickstarter to carefully inch the engine to just before TDC.



When you do this, you will see another mark on the gear portion of the cam sprocket come into view. If the TWO marks are at the 12 o'clock postion, then this mark is at about 2 o'clock. You couldn't see it before since it was obscured by the head casting.

3. Grab the exhaust cam and find the mark on the gear.

DSCF5081.jpg


While holding the exhaust cam in your hands, mesh the teeth together with the cam sprocket at the marks.

DSCF5094.jpg


The tooth on one is marked to mesh with the valley on the other.

DSCF5095.jpg


Now, you can't FULLY mesh the gears at the marks because the cam isn't aligned with its recesses in the head. But, with your hands tilting the cam up a little, you can mesh the edges of the cam teeth. (confused, yet? Good thing I don't write instruction manuals!) When you're sure the marked tooth meshes with the marked valley, "walk" the cam down to its recesses in the head without unmeshing the gears.

DSCF5096.jpg


You're rolling the cam gear around the gear portion of the cam sprocket until the cam rests in its proper place in the head.

DSCF5097.jpg


4. Snug down the exhaust cam retaining caps.

DSCF5099.jpg



5. Carefully turn the engine over with the kickstarter a few times. There should be no interference.

6. Turn the engine over to just AFTER TDC. You should still see the mark on the gear portion of the cam sprocket that aligns with the mark on the intake cam. This mark is at about the 10 o'clock position relative to the two marks.

7. Repeat step 3 with the intake cam.

DSCF5099.jpg


DSCF5095.jpg


DSCF5103.jpg


DSCF5104.jpg


Snug down the caps.

DSCF5105.jpg


8. Turn the engine over a few times and put it back to TDC.

9. Remove the left side cam caps so you can reinstall the oil line.

DSCF5106.jpg


10. Torque the cam caps.



There! Guaranteed cam timing!!
 
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