Can anyone tell me the thread size of the camshaft? I have a 95 f150 4.9. I'm tying to press on new timing gears and can't seem to find the right size bolt.

 

IIRC I used the long bolt (7/16?) From the alternator to press on the gear from a couple 300s I've done. It required a deep socket/pipe w/ washers to make up the slack from head to gear, but it's a bolt that works.

 

Yeah the bolt worked thank you. However, I messed up initially when setting the gear on the shaft. It got about a quarter of the way down and the shaft just started turning on me. Did I just screw myself?

 

Not necessarily. Everything hinges upon whether the crank and cam gears are aligned properly. If you aligned the gears and then the cam gear moved after the gears had been meshed (moving the crank gear as well) then you are good. If the cam moved independently of the crank gear after you had them aligned, then you need to redo the alignment.

If you never aligned the cam with the crank, you need to start over anyway.

if you have a manual transmission, put it in 5th gear with the parking brake locked and the engine won't turn.

you're welcome with that alternator bolt!

 

Here's a video that might be helpful:

 

Thank you I followed through those videos made it a lot easier. After everything was together and tried cranking it still won't fire. I checked multiple times that my timing marks lined up. Set it to tdc and installed distributor with it facing number one cylinder. Checked for spark on high tension wire and all cylinders and I have spark on all of them ( orange spark? Set to 20kv) After cranking for a while I pulled the cap off distributor and set the crank to tdc again. When I did my rotor was facing the complete opposite way. I pulled it out and reset it agian facing #1. Still no difference when cranking. After cranking there is a strong smell of gasoline and though I have not tested pressure I know it's getting to the rail and the bottom of my #1 plug had fuel on it. I haven't done a compression test on it yet but when setting to tdc it had notable compression and popped the papet towel out of the cylinder. I'm at point where I'm baffled. Also to note before I realized my timing gear was gone I had already replaced the icm coil and distributor. Does anyone have any idea what I am missing here?

 

Sounds like distributor is 180* out

Edit: sorry I reread and you said you verified distributor position and rotation. Stupid question but did you make sure TPS and IAC are plugged in?

 

Yes I made sure to connect everything and have rechecked

 

Apparently you were 180 degrees off to begin with. With the strong smell of gasoline the cylinders may be too flooded to fire. I would remove the spark plugs and crank the engine over to expel any gasoline.

Disable the ignition and/or have a fire extinguisher handy when doing this, it's easy to start a fire doing this.

 

yeah it was out 180 degrees originally but I got that squared away hopefully. Not that any of it matters now though, I did the compression test and had 0 on every cylinder