Help inside....cam gear is hitting bolts behind it!!!!
 

Ok here is a pic of what I am talking about. I did a cam install a while back. Well today I am swapping out my oil pump since it crapped out on me. Well I notice behind the cam gear that I can see it is hitting the bolts behind it that mount the plate on around where the cam slides in. I even took the plate off and checked everything out. I started putting everything back together again and noticed that the cam gear will still be hitting the bolts!!!! Has anybody else had this problem???? I'm kinda lost on what to do...I mean the cam has been in there for over a year and I haven't had any issues....

Also like I said I am swapping out my oil pump since the one on there took a shit. Well when I drained my oil I had much MUCH more fine metal shavings on the drain plug magnet than usual. I mean I always have a small amount of shavings when I change my oil, but today there was more than normal. I screwed up and cleaned the plug off before I thought about taking a pic of it. But at least there were no large pieces of metal...it was only super fine shavings like during the break in.....should I be worried????

Anyways here is the pic of one of the bolts that is getting hit by the cam gear...BTW they are all getting hit like this...

http://www.ls1camaro.net/freehosting/121-2174_IMG.jpg

is this with the stock chain and all?

Are those the stock bolts? On my 98 the bolts had really short heads on them, and they were black in color.

where they black because of the oil. I though he had dif bolt but he said they where the stock one and the stock chain on a dif board.

This is a motor that you know has never been torn down? I don't know about that one man. Looks like you might have the wrong bolts in there. I would ask somebody to snap some pics of a short block that is out of the car and to show us if those bolts are the same or not. If not then I don't know what to tell you.

Looks to me you have the wrong bolts on there. Maybe you switched the retainer plate bolts with the cam gear bolts. The bolts in this pic appear to have shorter heads than yours. I am not completely positive, but I'm willing to bet you switched some bolts. If it comes down to it, you can just grind down the head of the bolt a little to clear.

http://ls1howto.com/howto/fbody/cams...tallnewcam.jpg

Under the cover there are two bolt designs, one is the silver, the other is the black ones on the oil pump.

I do not think they guy has the wrong bolts inplace. I am concerned that there is something wrong with the way the cam is positioned in the block [in too far] or the gear is not a the stock design.

How much fore aft play is in the cam?

Good luck

Well crap I already got everything put back together.

I was curious about the possibility of the cam being too far in. If that were true wouldn't the cam be set properly once you install the cam gear??? If the cam were too far in wouldn't it get pulled back out a bit when you tighten the bolts down on the gear???

Jesse

AFAIK, the cam is free to move fore and aft a very short distance. The plate restricts forward movement, and back of the block restricts rearward movement.

Did you happen to note the distance the cam and cam gear moved fore and aft?

What did you do to solve the contact problem, and did you use the www.ls1howto.com site as a guide? If not take a look at the cam swap images.

Is there something other then the rear cover that restricts rearward movement of the cam? Something in the back of the block?

www.ls1howto.com is the site I used when I did my cam swap. I put it back together and there seemed to be a tiny bit of clearance this time around. I'm not sure what changed, but they seemed to be clearing by just a hair. I drove it quite a bit today with no problem....