Jeff Smith's Garage - Degree wheel basics 

BuzzJones Yes absolutely. The biggest difficulty will be establilshng TDC. The msot common tool used is a spark plug piston stop. The only problem is taht with newer heads and flattop pistons that often the piston stop will not contact the piston. What I've done in tese cases is to use a lever-action, over-center tool that was originally designed to remove/change valvesprings. If you use a flat bar to contact the valvestem insted of the spring retainer, you can use this tool to push down on either the intake or exhaust valve and use it as a piston stop. You must be very careful here not to hit the valve very hard with the piston or it may bend the valve, so approach the top of the travel carefully and slowly and under no circumstance use the starter motor to bump the engine - you must do it by hand wtih all the spark plugs out of the engine. But first, try the spark plug piston stop method and see if that works - its much easier to use and quicker.

Not necessarily! The keyway in the crankshaft indexes the lower sprocket to the crankshaft....assuming that the keyway is correct. The "dot" in the upper sprocket is to align with the "dot" in the lower sprocket. This indexes the camshaft to the crankshaft, the chain locks them together! To further degree the camshaft, an offset bushing is used at the upper sprocket........ or, we use a lower sprocket with several offseting keyways in it. Now, to precisionally verify that all is good, we use the true # 1 TDC markings against the camshaft lobe operation, as per the manufacturer's specs.

The pointer is adjustable so that you can split the "stop". The degree wheel, once attached, should NOT be moved against the crankshaft.

Forgot great video's Jeff keep them going Musho Gracia great video

Why does it have to be a video? There are dozens of magazine stories written on how to degree a cam. All you have to do is search for on them on the internet. I personally have written different versions of this story at least five times in my career. This video emphasizes only the step (which is often overlooked for its importance) that it is critical to determine TDC with the degree wheel because if this step is not accurate all of the other steps will be inaccurate which menas you might as well not bother to degree the cam at all. Determining TDC is the critical step.

@@jeffsmith2003 then why do this video?

Nice, clean, and to the point. Nice job. 😎