Sifton/aftermarket cam chest gears

Knucklehead won't start

white1j0
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Re: won't start

#16

Post by white1j0 »

Yesterday we switched coils off my Panhead, thinking this is definitely the problem, before we tried to start it, we went over everything, plug gap, readjusted the valves, installed a new condenser, went to check the points and here it jumped timing again, pulled the timer and checked to see if the locking pin broke, which it wasn't, reset the timing, kicked it over and it fired, conked out after about 3 seconds, wouldn't even fart after that, pulled the cam cover off, and checked the gears for broken teeth, nothing broke, everything in the gear case was spotless, luckily my buddy was fishing around in the cavities with a magnet and on the end of it was a small pin, turn out it's the pin that holds the worm gear onto the circuit breaker gear, put it back together staked the pin ,which should have been done in the first place, It's a brand new Sifton Lighting cam chest, reset everything, fired right up, and took out for a 30 mile ride. Want to thank everyone for there help, Whitey
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PanPal
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Re: won't start

#17

Post by PanPal »

Thanks for posting what you found. Nice looking ride you have there!
Doc37W
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Re: won't start

#18

Post by Doc37W »

Good thing he found the pin before it went thru the oil pump!! Happy riding! Doc
Andygears
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Re: won't start

#19

Post by Andygears »

Happy you found the problem. Man, I bet that was a lotta kicking! So the aftermarket strikes again. If this happened once, it could happen again to another rider/builder assumuning his NEW cam chest was not the problem. Not exactly a "side of the road" fixit issue.
Goes to show that there's engineering and there's reproduction/copying, unless the designer understands all the factors involved when copying an OEM part, the reliability can be lost. Are not the OEM gears one piece? And surely this was a cost issue. Hobbling a gear near a shoulder is more costly, because each must be done individually as the factory. But a single loose gear can be stacked on an arbor and a few done simotaneously and pinned to the driving gear afterwards.
How can we get this into the knowledge base under the topic "Sifton/aftermarket cam chest gears"? Because if this happened once, it would be worthwhile to closely examine your "New" gears before assembly.

Andygears
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Re: Sifton/aftermarket cam chest gears

#20

Post by 41Craig »

Andygears; The early gears were 2 piece with the pin and the later gears were 1 piece
Craig
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