How to Measure Evo Cam Gear with Pins

Hey, it's Mike Roan. Welcome to Fix my hog. Now we're starting to kind of really get back into the retro thing here with the Fix my hog and we're doing a lot more videos on the Evil and really, you know, 84 to 99 the Evil had a nice long run, great little motor, but there's a couple of things here. A lot of people they're going in and they're trying to put their own camshaft in and there's something they're kind of overlooking and it, it's pretty important. And if you're reading the factory manual, you're going to see in there that, you know, your P gear and your cam sprocket gear have to be fitted correctly. And it's pretty important because, you know, if it's too tight, it's going to be winning and it's going to be putting a load on the cam bushing and the cam bearing and it's going to be extremely annoying. And also if it's, you know, the tolerances are too loose. So what we're going to do today here is we're going to show you how to measure the actual od of the cam sprocket and the pin sprocket and then you can properly pick out the one you need for your proper fitment. Also, I'm going to show you is how to align the cam sprocket to the camshaft. You know, and we'll probably start there first. It's fairly simple task. And really the, well, let's start with your motorcycle if it's running and you're listening to the engine, you go by the cam cavity and what you're listening for is, you know, a whining sound that's going to tell you that whoever's been in there has put the wrong cam gear in or the wrong P gear and now the motor is whining because it's too tight. The flip side of that is every time I order an aftermarket cam chef from these vendors, they come with their own uh cam sprocket on there and it seems like they're always too big. So a lot of times what I end up doing, if the motorcycle sounds good is I'll end up pressing the stocks bracket off the stock cam and then I'll press the aftermarket sprocket off the aftermarket cam and I'll put the stock sprocket on the aftermarket cam. And then, you know, you, you should be good to go, but to measure it more importantly, you know, that's what we're gonna do here is that procedure. But so, ok, let's say you, you got the cam out of your bike. Now, you can see here, I made my own little tool and what I did is I just took a rotor timing, rotor out of the stock bike and then I just took a couple of Allen wrenches and sharpened a point on them. And what you can do is you can check to see where your cam timing is before you take it apart. You know, on this particular cam, I can kind of see they're off. Let me see if I can show you a better view here. Let's try this one. Ok? You get a close up to that, you can see that that pointer is pointing right to that line and that one is right on the dot There. Now it's not rocket science, but what it's going to allow you to do is if you've got a known good cam sprocket, you make your little pointer tool and now before you press the gear off, what I like to do is uh I'll take a magic marker and you can see I've described a couple of lines, take a little magic marker, go like this marker. Cam's got a little notch in it here. They can fill that in, take a straight edge and right off the flat spot there. We're gonna scribe a line that's gonna be a nice little reference mark. So now you go ahead and press the gear off and you've got your little mark, you got your new aftermarket cam, you simply just got to line this up on here, put it in the press and incrementally sneak up on it, you press it down, maybe 50,000. Get it on there, you can kind of put your marker on there. Check it, see where you're at. If it's not lined up, you got to pop it off. Turn it a little bit, press it back on, check it, see where you're at. Continue to push it on. You know, once, once it's lined up, you push it all the way down until it's fully seated. So now at least you got your, your cam sprocket timing time to the cam correctly. If you really want to spend a lot of money, there's after market tools out there, put the cam in, use the slot, set it up, they've got various degrees, you can go four degrees, eight degrees, advanced whatever. But you know, it just, it just costs more money. It depends on how many times am I going to do this, most of the time you can get by with just making your own little tool. So, ok, so now the more important thing in areas is what we're going to do is we're going to measure the OD of this gear. And there again, um you can buy these pins and you have to kind of look at what your group your evil is. Uh because 89 and earlier is different than And later, I think the, the 1990 later is 108,000 pin and then the earlier ones are 105,000. So if you got a micrometer, verify, you know, if you've got both sets, make sure you're using the right one. So I've, I've measured these, I know they're 100 and 8000 and this spike is 90 older. So, OK. Measure that. Now take a rubber band and you get your pins 100 and 80 from each other. That's all set up. Now you take your micrometer and uh we're gonna take a measurement here glasses here. OK? So we're at 2.7482. If you roll the micrometer around, that gives you that last 10th there. And that two is lined up with the line. That's, that's where I come up with that two on the end. So now you grab your shirt typically, if you're getting an after mark cam from a vendor, you, it's gonna come with an instruction manual and they'll, this chart is also in the Harley factory book too. So I go down here, I look at the cam gear, the OD and 2.4782 crosses over to a yellow pin gear. Believe it or not. I just happen to have a yellow pin gear. So now what we're gonna do is we're gonna verify this thing because it's a used gear. So we'll take these pins out, put them in here. I'm gonna take another measurement. So yeah, you're gonna probably have to invest in a couple of micrometers or if you know a buddy with a machine shop, he'll be willing to help you. I don't know if you could get an accurate measure of the vernier because you're, you're talking tens of thousands here. Ok. My glasses again. Hm. 1.4832. So looking at that, the yellow opinion gear says it's a range of 1.4842 to 1.485. So that tells me this is a used gear and it's worn 1/1000 of an inch, not a big deal 1/1000 of an inch. But I'm just saying when you're dealing with used parts they wear, if you bought a new part from Harley, it would probably be the yellow spec. So there again, don't fool yourself and think, oh, I'm good measure the used gear you got that way, you're not ending up with excessive clearance. You can see this procedure is really not that difficult. You know, take your time. These pins are relatively inexpensive. Somebody's got a machine shop or have you got access to micrometers? Borrow them, have that guy, hold your hand, make sure you get a nice good measurement because I mean, if you're going in and just doing a simple cam modification, yeah, you could take the easy way out, reuse the old cam gear, but why not just verify everything is not all worn out, put the proper set up in, you'll be happy at the end of the day. Just peace of mind wise because there's really nothing more annoying than having an overt P gear and having to deal with it. Now, you're faced with this monumental task of pulling the rocker box covers, you know, pulling the cam back out and it's just a big hassle. So I always just do it right first time. So, and, you know, as usual have your manual handy just so you can refer to that and know where you're at. But for the most part, pretty straightforward, I think anybody at home should be able to handle this task. And, you know, as always kind of tune in, fix my hog, we're going to be having a lot more evil stuff down the way. So, thanks for tuning in.