cam timing and nerd speak

So I got out the degree wheel and the dial caliper after spending a lots of hours wrapping my brain around degreeing the cam.
I needed a way to reach WAY down into bore to get to lifter and accurately measure valve lift. A lot of people mention using a pushrod but it woulda been flopping around and just not as accurate as I wanted.
I grabbed a handful of the old lifters and welded them together. That way there would be limited rocking, I would be assured of a solid contact and hands-free operation. I used 3 of them and welded together in a stack with bottoms at both ends for a flat measuring surface. First try worked for a bit then weld broke cause I had to grind smooth to fit in lifter bore. Next try will be perm as I ground 3 vertical deep grooves for weld to grab so I could grind smooth but still have a good weld.


I set it all up and got it dialed in with TDC zero and all (BTW-due to some tolerance stacking and an error in initial bearing size the piston instead of zero deck is proud about 7 thousandths…)
I had a heck of a time making sense of the results-it was telling me I was 166 degrees centerline (54 degrees retarded) or something equally weird (116.5/216.5)... This went on for a while till I realized I was measuring exhaust lifter instead of intake-DOH!
Once I fixed that (swapping holes is what broke initial lifter extension) I initially measured around a 125 centerline (80.5/169). Cam is ground to be a 112 and factory set –8 retarded. I wanted something more like 109(3 advanced) and I ended up with 63.5 at 050 before max lift and 154 at .050 after max lift to give me a 108.75 centerline.

This changes things too depending on headgasket-I could be looking at 9.93SCR/7.85DCR and 0.044 quench with cam at 112(straight up) advancing 3.25 degrees will give me 9.93SCR/8.05DCR 0.044 quench. If headgasket turns out to be the 0.041 instead of the 0.051 I’m gonna be running expensive gas at 10.15/8.23 with 0.034 quench.  Hmmm…