When things go bad, and by that I mean expensive, there are a couple of common causes. Stubbornness and stupidity (listed together because they’re best friends) are one, while ignorance is another.
I had a bad spell the other day. I watched a couple of videos and decided I didn’t need to sub out getting my timing gear on the cam. I got everything set up, got the cam secured in a vertical position, gloves, torch, dead blow hammer, woodruff key in place, and I heated the gear to place it on my cam.
The first attempt was super easy, but the woodruff key fell out. The gear came off by hand, and the second attempt had the same result. The darn woodruff key fell off again. By now the gear had cooled and had a pretty good bind on my cam, and this is where the stupidity came in. Instead of reheating the gear, I put my puller on it and started winding the puller post against the end of my cam. After a few turns I heard the gear release, which is when I realized I had fractured my gear and it hadn’t released from my cam at all. Excellent.
When I heated the gear a couple of days later to remove it, it came off annoyingly easily, which kind of made me ripped. It could have really given me a struggle so I didn’t feel so numb from attempting the removal without heat. Lesson learned.
I’m going to glue the woodruff key into the cam with red loktite, and be more careful when my new timing set arrives.
I almost hesitated to admit to this bit of brain fartedness, but we’re all human and we all make mistakes. This probably won’t even be my worst one by the time I get my truck back together. We pick ourselves back up, and keep moving forward.
