Dialing In The 308's Cam Reveals Timing Troubles 

No you are absolutely right to be that particular on 5 degrees.That's enough to have valve/piston clearance issues or all kinds of timing problems to sort out later depending on your setup........

looking forward to the next video 👍

Excellent video Stace, and some really great comments below. Hopefully your next video will have it sorted with the -4 degrees.

This is a great video And i think i was your 1000th subscriber too

That engine looks great, good on you for tweaking it, it will pay off. I’m replacing the springs, brake cylinder and shoes on the rear and it’s a confusing mess!

Hi Stacey, Something to think about is the differences between the prepollution engines and the later pollution ones was that the cams were ground the same specs but they changed the cam timing by shifting the keyway in the chain set, which keyway I am not sure. I think it was a 5 degree shift and that caused a power drop from about 240 HP down to 160 ish hp. All in the name of pollution.

Fing rabbits, always drag me down that bloody hole. Or is it me, looking down there. Nice one.

Smart girl

Tolerance stack up is your issue, a half a degree on your crank and a one degree difference in your chain set all adds up. Do what your viewer said and try the -4 keyway, if you are still a little off get yourself an off set crank key which you can get in1 degree increments. I would personally ran it at 4 degrees advance anyway, as it will boost low end torque without reducing your top end power to much,, which is needed on a small V-8 such as yours. Your engine guru should have known all this anyway.

Hello Stace, just found your channel and can sympathise with you frustration with cam timing on Holden's, if you're after the best performance from a crow cam just read the cam card and set it up to have the specified lift at no 1 inlet at tdc and it will be good, in the past I've had to advance a full tooth and then use the retard gear keyways to achieve this figure, not good for the next guy working on it but best for the cam. At least your not working on an old Ford cleveland they are much worse. Hope it all works out and if it doesn't you can make more vids on changing the cam timing and the perceived changes a few degrees of timing makes to your engine. Cheers

I'm surprised the motor doesn't have anything on it to adjust cam timing. On SB Chevys you use offset bushings, you press the appropriate one into the cam gear hole that the cam pin locates into, and that adjusts the timing as you please. I don't think you can adjust it 5 degrees though, that's a lot. The most I ever heard of is 4 degrees. Also, just another little tip - when you're looking for TDC using bump stops, it's better to use longer bumps - about an inch or two long rather than a few mm. If you think about the geometry of the crank, when the piston is very close to TDC the crank turns quite a lot for a tiny difference in piston height, so any small deviations give you a bigger difference in measured crank angle. By stopping the piston an inch or two down from the deck, any tiny errors in piston position relate to much smaller errors in crank angle. I don't think this would be the cause of your 5 degree error though, but still something useful to keep in mind.

Should be using solid lifter to test not a soaked in oil lifter which doesn't do anything?

Your crankshaft if reground can be reground slightly offset to remove the worse part of a bit of wear by a machine shop not by much but enough .

accumulation of small errors which is all adding

How much has being decked off of your block

Good video and I’ll been keen to see what you find when you retard the cam 4 degrees. I can’t see you needing to chase this anymore than 4 degrees, 2 degrees might do the job to for a 308 noting the cam you are using a 230/230 @ .050, approx .500” lift (pretty much a 286 Crane) cam. How much compression is this 308 engine going to have? The engine will need some compression (at least 9.5 to 1. 10-1 would be better) to mate the cam work and you might find it will want to rpm higher than you want, but the early style heads with absorb some cam compared to VN style with the same spec cam to suit the different valve layout. Anyway, good luck.

Interesting

mass producing so they probably didn't worry too much about the accuracy given its not going to be a racing engine it will be ok

You are being too pedantic, 5 deg adv will improve low end torque and compensate for chain stretch .