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Distributor Backlash and Cam Gear Design

12:04
50:34
69.7K views

At 12:04 in

Former Pontiac Motorsports Manager John Callies: Epic Golden Era NASCAR Stories & Garage Tour!

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What happens here

Callies displays a distributor backlash checker, which is a tool used to measure play in the distributor gear, explaining its importance for precise ignition timing. He connects this to custom cam gears he designed to achieve exact backlash. He emphasizes that this level of precision is crucial for performance and extends engine life. He also shows a press-on cam gear he designed for camshafts, which helped achieve accurate timing and reduced spark scatter, a common issue in early high-RPM engines.

Goal: Explain the importance of precise timing and custom gear design in engines.

Tools and materials

  • Custom Cam Gears Morel Products — Achieving precise timing and reducing spark scatter in high-performance engines
  • Distributor Backlash Checker — Measuring play in distributor gears for timing accuracy

What they say

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channel right knows that Don Miller has that tone to all these crazy stories and obviously with Penske Racing South right then you were connected with Don yeah I mean Don was he's just an unbelievable guy and he had the ability to put people together and of course there's nobody like RP or Roger and he's a one-off and if you think you can follow him forget it I don't care what age he'll outrun you he'll do you that guy is a Non-Stop an unbelievable person great for our sport so how do you go from Pontiac to crankshafts and now lifters how does this story arc work how do you do how do you capture three lifetimes in one well our general manager we get a new either general manager or a new sales manager if they want it requires some money out of the engineering budget to run this thing so you need that help okay well I was on my seventh general manager about my eighth sales manager and I went down to Indie drag races I was on top of the tower and showing that this stands both sides are filled and this guy a new sales manager said I don't know why we're here John and I said you see every ass out there sitting in a seat drive here in a car we want that to be a Pontiac that's why we're here so anyway it just the selling I got tired of trying to educate everybody that there's a way to go so I left and I knew that we were short on having a crankshaft supplier so that's why I started crankshaft company doing the racing ranks as I got into that and then it was I don't know seven seven years later I had gone from a development person designing to a banker and pulse Personnel manager I hated it so anyway my partner Rick Norton bought me out and then I came down to help Joe minati merchandise lenati cans so then we ended up working six years sold it to Holly I was out of a job again so I went into crankshafts I mean camshafts and doing camshaft course for all the people that lasted six years and then the fellow old owned camshaft machine passed away and I left there and started the lifter Business Without Edinburgh so

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