Last weekend I was in a pinch, I had no tool to turn my crank to degree the cam. Silly me, I thought the bolt would work. I looked up all of my resources and saw that there were two types available. The slip-on with (or without) a threaded portion for the degree wheel and a three holed type that bolts to the balancer. I didn’t want to wait for the delivery of such a tool, so I scratched my head and looked through my tools and realized that if I weld a socket to the degree wheel I will have what I need, a way to turn the crank to degree using a ½” breaker bar. This is similar to the three holed type but with a build in degree wheel. Keep in mind that the wheel I bought a couple of years ago is a steel one.
First thing I had to do was make sure that the wheel will fit my dampener. Nope. I used a round file to oblong the holes inward to make them match up.
I had a 1-1/8th” socket with a 1/2" drive that I had reamed out to use as a bearing tool. I knew that I would never need it again, so I filed off the chrome on the end of the socket. Then I used the side of the file to make three notches in the ID of the wheel to facilitate welding the socket to the wheel from the backside. I bolted the socket and the wheel together to weld when I realized I needed room, so I cut three relief notches in my washer. After welding I used a die grinder to take down the welds to flush.
The face of the damper is set forward a little from the bolt holes so I doubled up on the washers to space the wheel out when it's bolted on. I opted not to make these permanent for labors sake.
After using it to degree the cam I had one more use for it. To degree the dampener! I never thought of verifying the timing marks, never! I got to the point where the dampener was going to stay on in the build and set up the positive piston stop on #1 and set up a pointer with a sharpened coat hanger. This setup is the same as degreeing the cam.
I then went to 10 degrees ATC, 0, 10BTC, 20BTC, and 30BTC. I found that the pointer was over 1 degree offset. A small lock washer behind the pointer was able to move the pointer out enough to be where it was as close as I could expect to be on all of the markings.
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Today
