Modified timing cover

  Here's the timing cover with all the mods.  You can see where I ground it down to make the idlers work right (middle arrow).  The way to do it is to put a dab of grease on the idler axles (the part that sticks out the furthest) and see where it contacts the cover.  Then just slowly start grinding away.  I used a porting tool and it worked great - just make sure you go slow and don't take off too much at a time.  You can also see in this picture the blocked holes for the water pump drive and crank sensor.  The top one was a quick relese type plug, but I thought the pieces on it looked pretty sketchy, so I took it apart and just used the rubber part.  I used a couple of fender washers and a machine screw with a nylock nut to squeeze it together and it works great!  The bottom one is similar, but it started as a taperd rubber stopper and I drilled a hole through it for the screw.  Both of those pieces came from the local Ace Hardware store.
*IMPORTANT UPDATE - 25 Sep 01*
I took the timing cover back off this weekend to track down an oil leak. I thought it was coming from the OptiSpark seal, but it turns out it was from the plug I put in the water pump shaft hole. That hole has a couple of notches out of it and it appears that wasn't allowing it to seal completely. I drilled out the hole and put in a brass freeze plug, which seems to be working ... I also noticed that the driver's side of the idler gear assembly (the one that has no load on it normally) was tapping up against the timing cover. This probably wasn't causing any problems, but I went ahead and machined out some material from that area. Bottom line - I'm glad I tried this gear drive, but if I had it to do over again I'd just go with a standard double roller timing set.

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