And, another update. After having a chat to Baz (Thanks heaps mate for your time and experience!!
It's much appreciated and very welcome!), I have decided to roll with the standard cam that came with it, but on 'position 1' on the cam wheel rather than the book 'position 2' in order to get the SSS timing. This will also work with my standard Hitachi carburettors.
However, this is only a temporary solution... After all this HSC crap is over, I have decided that I will pull the engine and do it again, properly, taking my time and doing my research, and getting it perfect. At the same time I will get the engine bay and underneath the car perfect (rather than the odd patch here and there that I've been doing), along with suspension etc. So, sit back, relax, and grab some popcorn, because this is going to be a long term project/build/question/tutorial/whatever-you-call-it thread... And at the end of it all (if it ever ends
) I will have an absolutely amazing SSS! I'm going to be focusing both on driveability and performance - for an all out performance thread, keep an eye my Red Rocket build thread
Also, a big shoutout to Dean at Ivan Tighe Engineering! I've read some pretty crap reviews on the internet, but these are all several years old, and very true - at the time. However, I'm not sure what was going on back then, but there's been a management change at some point and recently I've heard nothing but good things about them, and my personal experiences have been very good. My first 180B regrind cam that I was going to use was turned around within a week (as in I got it back in a week) and they were very reasonable with pricing. While I haven't run the cam yet, I am very happy with the results, and they have been very helpful with choosing and ordering valve springs etc.
The reason for this shoutout however is, I emailed them about an hour ago for a 312 billet cam (as mentioned previously), and after deciding to use the old cam I rang Dean up to cancel the order - but despite being very busy he'd already done one lobe and had started on the second! He said it'd be ready to post tonight, before the public holiday.Whether the cam is any good remains to be seen, obviously, but from my experience up to this point I am very happy with them! Of course I will keep everyone posted on what the cams are like, whether I find any issues with them etc but for now, I am extremely satisfied.
As for my cam timing, I had the crank at TDC (I managed to figure that out approximately within half a degree - a degree) and then set up the cam in relation to it, lined up my marks, and bingo. I have an adjustable cam sprocket with many different holes, and I measured the angles between each hole and the corresponding timing marks, to figure out how much advance/retard the cam would have. I also double checked by checking the marks on the back of the cam pulley itself in relation to the elongated timing mark on the cam thrust plate - I'll get some pictures before I pull it all apart. I then got a protractor and double checked how many degrees the cam was advanced (within perhaps 1/4 - 1/2 a degree) and multiplied this by 2 to get cam advance in crank degrees. If that makes sense? It's hard to explain, but I'm fairly confident that I got 6 degrees cam advance within 1 degree tolerance.
Not that it matters any more seeing as I am going back to the old cam on position 1, just for the sake of this damn project.