All the timing sets i buy are too lose

DeCaff2007 said:

How does one "bend" a cam or a crank? They are tempered steel, are they not?

My best guess here is that either the cam gears are heavily worn or they are not correct to begin with.

Uhm... I'll add this, though: We put timing sets on both of my Wife's POS's and they were TIGHT going on. Less then 1000 miles later, both chains have stretched and feel all dangly.

Click to expand...

You can bend a cam or a crank. I addition to the ways Shurkey mentioned you can bend a cam just by leaving it sit in one spot with tension on the valve springs.
This is why if you have an engine sitting around for a long time you shpuld always back the rockers off untill they are loose.
You can bend a crank or a cam just by leaving them laying flat on the bench long enough.
Hardening or "Tempering" is more about making those surfaces machinable and wear resistant.
But it makes them more brittle.
The bending is caused by one side of the material being in compression while the opposite side is under tension.
One side is being pushed together while the side opposite is being pulled apart.
Thus, the bend.
There should be some slack on one side of the chain.
There is a spec for that.
But not loose enough to skip.
A couple of things come to mind.
Are you buying the same timing set from the same place over and over or are you trying different manufacturers?
It is quite possible these days to get into an entire run of bad parts.
Sometimes from different stores who use the same supplier but its just in a different box.
And sometimes just by a bad catalog number they keep selling the wrong part.

The only time ive ever had a similiar problem was decades ago on an aluminum 215 buick.
It had chewed its cam bearings to the point that I could move the cam up and down by hand.
Its a really odd problem to have on a SBC
Let us know what you find out

Don't the cam bearings get oiled first on an SBC?

Supercharged111 said:

Don't the cam bearings get oiled first on an SBC?

Click to expand...

YES, oil goes from pan to pump, pump to filter, filter back to block over to distributor, around the distributor to oil galleries, oil galleries to cam and lifters and from the cam bearings down through the oil galleries to mains and rods and back to the pan.

I once had an old POS Dodge Shadow. 2.2L turbo, 5-speed. Sitting at a drive thru one day and it flat out DIED. No warning, no CEL. It would crank all day long but wouldn't start.

Took it to a mechanic at the time because I was young/dumb/just didn't care. Somehow, the camshaft snapped right where the cam gear bolts on, held on only by the few threads left on the cam gear bolt. I think it skipped more than one tooth after that lol.

Never figured out why that happened, but I've learned never to buy dodge again.

I just replaced my original timing set (222k miles) because I thought the chain had excess play. The new one had the same amount of slack.