Well, I got my engine (350) and tranny (th350) out of the car, and the engine on a stand. Since the timing chain had quite a bit of slack, I decided to replace the gear set with a double roller. I did a mock install of my edelbrock timing chain set, and what I noticed is, to get the cam and crank gears to line up vertically (not talking about lining up timing marks), the cam needs to be slid out about 1/32 to 1/16 of an inch to for the cam and the crank to be in-line. This is with the crank spocket driven on the crank as far as it can go. This is a hydraulic flat tappet. Is this ok to operate this way? or will I run into potential problems? Also, would a cam button help? Thanks for the help!

I have seen this before with a different timing set. In my case the lower crank gear was not champhered enough for the gear to buttup against the crank. In other words the gear was hitting the radius on the crankshaft where the jrnl. was machined down to the crank snout. In that corner. The inside of the gear has a bevel to clear that radius on the crank, but this gear did not have enough bevel. The step on the cam gear should measure .125 for proper cam spacing in the block. This is assuming your block has no wear on the front where the gear would have eaten into the block like some BBC's do . The most important part here is that the lobe on the cam is in the proper location in the lifter bore. It should have a noticable offset to the rear of the block just by looking at it with the naked eye. It is important that the back of the crank gear does go all the way flush against the front of the crank, if the bevel on the inside of the gear is against the crank not allowing the gear to press flush against the crank, it will keep the balance out too far on the motor and also be likely to break the crank gear when you tighten the balancer bolt.

Thanks for the great info. I understand what your saying about the radius where the journal is machined down to the crank snout. Is it possible for me to machine the crank gear to a shallower bevel angle, say, with a dremel? Also, is the .125" from the face of the block to where the machined portion of the cam ends? I plan on putting a torrington bearing behind the cam gear, and also a cam button in front. So, I figure that should mininize axial movement.

yes the depth of the cam gear is .125