[DeTomaso] Timing chain, gear sets and thrust plates/bearings

[Daniel C Jones]

> For a hydraulic or solid flat-tappet cam, you only need the chain and its
> sprockets- and the sprockets are normally included. The only recommendation
> is to avoid buying only by price: the cheaper double row chain sets are made
> in India or Taiwan, not normally known for being 351-C experts nor for
> long-lived parts. Stick with Cloyes or Edelbrock for reliability.

Unfortunately it's not that simple these days.  Edelbrock, like many others
does not make their timing sets.  They repackage them from multiple vendors.
You need to know who made the sprockets and chains.  One of the guys on the
FE board used to work at Speed Pro.  When he worked there they had a bunch
of offshore companies trying to be suppliers, so they piggybacked some chain
and sprocket testing on an OE bearing durability dyno run.  The Rolon chain
from India cost them the test motor a couple times when it failed before the
test was completed.  A summary of the test results for the chains is listed
below.  Speed Pro ended up using Dynagear sprockets and Morse chain but had
some quality control issues then Dynagear went out of business.  After that
they sourced the high end Cloyes sets (which used high quality Renold and
Iwis chain) and the quality control complaints went away.  The Ford Motorsport
351C timing sets I've purchased have used the Renold chain.

While there are many companies who sell timing sets, most do not make their
own product.  They source the gear and chain from other companies and can
change supplier.  The sprockets come from Rollmaster (Australia), SA Gear (US
but poor quality) and Cloyes (US, not pretty but good quality).  Avon also
makes some sprockets but sources others.  Dynagear (US) used to make sprockets
but went out of business.  A bunch of the performance aftermarket companies
are selling poor quality chain from India (Rolon), along with sprockets from
Australia (Rollmaster, J.P Performance) or SA gear.

Chain durability testing summary:
 Iwis (German) - looks very nice but was not tested, but has excellent
                 reputation as an OE supplier, used in high end Rollmaster
                 and some high end Cloyes sets
 Cloyes (US) - tested OK
 Renold (France) - tested excellent, used in most high end Cloyes sets but not
                   always
 Morse (US and Mexico) - tested excellent
 Daido (Japan) - tested excellent
 Tsubaki (Japan) - tested excellent
 KCM (Japan) - looks very nice but was not tested
 Rolon (India) - failed test

Sprockets:

 Rollmaster - Aus - pretty - never examined QA, good reputation
 SA Gear - US - ugly - crappy
 Cloyes - US - not pretty - good QA
 Dynagear - US - out of business - so-so when they existed
 Avon - some sprockets, buys everything else
 Crane - buys everything
 Comp - buys everything
 Speed-Pro - buys everything
 Ebrock - buys everything
 Melling - buys everything
 Elgin - buys everything

Note: Some of the test data was from Speed Pro, other from TRW.

The high end Cloyes and Ford Motorsport stuff tends to use the Renold chain
but the lower end Cloyes may use inferior chain.  Rollmaster usually uses
Iwis chain which is top notch.  I picked up an Australian Muscle Parts set,
thinking it was a Rollmaster but it turned out to have the inferior Rolon
chain from India.

Dan Jones