I'm on the lookout for the camshaft dowel pin but haven't had any luck locating one. My new timing chain didn't come with one.

 

Is there a pin on the old cam? Pin usually comes with the cam. On some kits anyway. Googled it
Ford 390 camshaft pin

 

oh, your probably right ill have to look tomorrow

 

You can make the pin from a grade 8 bolt. be sure you get all the fuel pump stuff on correctly and ALWAYS LOCKTITE the cam bolt in an FE.

 

I found the pin. I had to beat it out of the old timing gear. What im running in to now is the cam keeps sliding backward when trying to slide the top gear onto the pin. I think I have to clean the pin up since it got marred when I had to remove it from the old timing gear.

 

Don't let the cam slide too far back, it might pop the soft plug or worse yet let some lifters drop down. Might be easier to remove the lifters and camshaft, install the thrust plate, pin and cam gear. Then re-install the cam and lifters. The cam gears usually have holes so that the thrust plate can be bolted down.

 

I don't have the lifters in yet. I was under the impression the cam thrust plate doesn't allow the cam to slide out

 

Won't slide towards the front of the engine with the thrust plate in place. But, will slide back unless the cam gear is installed..

 

Just to confirm, the soft plug and any other plugs on the back of the engine block did get replaced right?

Usually those plugs are removed before hot tanking and depending on machine shop, unless you specify you want new ones put in, they assume you'll do it.

 

I'll have to check when I'm home. If i recall correctly i did see plugs

 

If CRS is not involved... I think the only soft plug is for the camshaft. There are 3 (?) screw in plugs foe oil passages.

 

That's the way my 351M/400 is, 1 soft plug for the cam and 3 threaded plugs for oil passages, wasn't sure if that was the same on the FE engines. Last one of those I rebuilt was in the mid to late 90s.

SBC if I recall correctly uses soft plugs for all the holes back there and back when I was helping guys build engines for local dirt track racing I seem to remember we would tap the smaller ones so we could use threaded plugs and avoid having them pop out at high rpm with HV/HP oil pump.

 

Here's the plugs in the back of the motor

there's the pin I'm working with. Like I said before, every time I try to slide the gear onto the pin it seems to push the cam back.

 

I'd use a file to clean it up, it's pretty mangled. you can put the cam gear on with the bolt just finger tight them put the pin in .

 

Interesting... I learned something new. My knee jerk reaction was to tell you the cam plug was installed backwards but decided to research that first. I have learned that on the FE engines that plug is installed "backwards" compared to what you see on most other engines and the rest of the soft plugs on your engine.

Regarding the cam gear and pin. I would try to clean that pin a little bit, but don't want to go overboard, you want it to be snug. Any slop there would cause cam timing to fluctuate. Not much, but it could still have an impact if there is any slop.

What you might try is use a longer bolt, say 4-6" length bolt that will thread into the cam (that's how I install and remove the cam so I have something I can grab).

Install thrust plate, use loctite on the bolts for that and torque to spec. Grab the timing gear, chain and bolt, insert bolt through cam gear and thread into cam. This might get a bit tricky since you'll need the timing chain on cam gear and on crank gear. If you have someone that can manage the bolt and hold the cam in place while you persuade the cam gear into place. Once you have the timing gear in place and double check timing marks are lined up correct you can remove the longer bolt and install the fuel pump eccentric with the correct bolt and some loctite.