Pros and cons of each. Guy I know from work has an S1-0 he want to build low 12's/high 11's.

He thinks gear drives are the way to go. I never heard of them before.

discuss

 

Gear drives are annoying. I had one in my race engine for one day before I yanked it out and put a chain back in. Even the high end race cars would rather use a belt drive over gear or chain.

 

more specifics please.

Just so I can get him off this crazy idea

 

I like the drive gears myself. I think they sound cool as ****!

 

Conventional timing set FTW.

Rich

 

care to elaborate?

 

Look closely at the literature on the cheap gear drives. If it's from a reputable manufacturer, it will have a disclaimer like "not for use over 6,500rpm" or something like that. The materials are typically of poor quality, etc. If you are talking about one from Crower, Milodon, etc. than it's a different story. These will be in the $400-800 range. Somehow, I get the feeling we are talking about the kind that sell for $100 bucks or so where the main claim to fame is that they are noisy? Stay away from these, IMHO, unless you have a very mild setup.

Rich

 

they are all a POS.

they don't dampen harmonics in the valve train.....just bad all around thats why noone uses them besides a madmax wanna be.

 

Rich

 

hmmm... not to jack the thread, but i recently put one in my 454, is it worth switching out? it's still on a test stand btw

 

You plan on making any power? then yes.....

If its a hotrod or street rod it won't matter, but I will they they are so much trouble alot of people will not touch them, I've never heard anything positive about them. Even the high end ones....

 

i didnt really notice it being too loud when we ran it on the stand, but that might have been due to the open headers...

i dont really want to remove the waterpump and harmonic balancer and buy a new set, but from what i've read elsewhere the gearsets can be pretty hard on the valvetrain due to no give like a chain has. Not too sure if i buy that though.

 

I personally have seen crank snouts break off and early bearing failure with these gear drives.

Think of it like this... You have two gears that are constantly trying to squeeze a smaller gear between the two.

A good double roller chain is what I prefer.

 

yea i agree, it's got to put a lot more stress on stuff... dont know what i was thinking. oh well

just for kicks i thought i'd post a pic of the motor

that was painting it last winter