Cam Sprocket Puller

brought to you by:  Dave Williams
This page: www.bacomatic.org/~dw/tool/djpuller/djpuller.htm
Main page: http://www.bacomatic.org/~dw/index.htm
Last Updated: 25 Aug 2008

Author: Dave Williams; dlwilliams=aristotle=net

Sometimes it seems I wind up making a lot of tools. In this case, I was degreeing the cam on a 351 Ford. I drove the sprocket on with my aluminum pipe, no big deal, checked the phasing, had to pull the sprocket off to move it a notch.

No way.

That's an aftermarket aluminum block, and that's a 351 Cleveland sprocket, so there's no room to get any puller jaws back there. I ground down the jaws on two pullers, but they wound up about .090" thick and simply bent when I tried to remove the sprocket.

I bought a matched pair of small crowbars, which couldn't get enough leverage to budge the thing. Then I tried making a puller out of angle iron and bolts. It simply bent into scrap when I leaned hard on the wrenches. I made another. No joy there either.

Finally, it was down to taking the angle grinder and destroying a $150 Rollmaster timing set, or, hell, why quit when I'm losing? I already had way more hours into the project than I could justify. Might as well go for broke.

Here we are, half a day into the project. Fat chunks of 1018 cold-rolled steel, sawed, milled to size, drilled, and tapped. It's 1-1/4" thick.
Small lathe faceplate. I normally use hardware-store washers on the bolts, but in this case I made some heavy quarter-inch washers to hold the heavy puller. Note the offset.
Line it up with the dead center in the tailstock. Then I used an indicator and the brass hammer to get it closer.
A bunch of drilling and boring, and now the puller is clamped to the gear.
3/8" steel plate and 3/8" fine thread bolts. I put tension on the bolts, whacked the center of the plate with the brass hammer, and the sprocket would move a little. Lather, rinse, repeat.
Voila! It's off! Hallelujah! And the SOB fought every bitter millimeter, too.
...disassemble the bits...
...and there's the gear! Note how thin the flange that actually pulls the gear is.
I had thought I might need to put some extra bolts or pins in the blocks to keep them from swiveling when I put tension on the puller, but everything stayed lined up fine.

The gear looks perfectly normal under the lights in the shop; for some reason the flash and digital camera make it look like the teeth were formed by rabid weasels. It is a new gear, other than turning the engine over a few times by hand to degree the cam.

So, after far more time than I can think about without wincing, the g*****d gear is off! The crank snout is a hair larger than either of the stock Ford cranks I have on hand, so I'll polish the crank nose a bit to get a little less interference.

If the b***h sticks again, Mr. Puller will rip its face off...