Broken Cam Gear

EPrill

EPrill

Well-known member
So this past weekend, I had a Fidanza adjustable cam gear break on the intake side on my FP Miata. Upon inspection of the Exhaust gear, it is also cracked. The center piece broke where it thins out to attach the cog gear part. These were new in 2011. No evidence of anything foreign causing this (oiling issue in the camshaft, foreign object, etc). Looks like it just can't take the abuse of an FP motor.

I'm offering this as a warning to anyone with them to make sure you have a look and consider timing them out. Also, I'm not inclined to buy the same brand (Fidanza), and wondered if anyone has experience with a version that is more robust. Light is good, but I think I'm more interested in one that won't fail.

 
Couple weekends ago at Gateway I had the bolt that holds the exhaust cam gear to the cam break. Torqued properly and no outside issue so far we have found, just broke off flush with the end off the cam. Corner workers found the cam gear and the end of the bolt was laying on the steering rack.

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Eric,

Can you estimate number of sessions or hours? I know 2012 was pretty busy, but I don't have a great feel of 11,13,14......

I was going to do similar for the crank nose/pulley I broke last year....
 
The car and gears have 22 events plus two separate test sessions at HPT (I include a pre-event test day in the "events" total) since it was new in April 2011.

Don't track hours. Its one thing at which I wish my AIM dash did a better job. It has a running clock but can't be reset, as far as I can tell.

I've also got 300+ chassis dyno pulls on them.
 
Eric,

TODA makes robust adjustable cam gears.Paul Jensen has a pair on his car. I was looking at them yesterday, the biggest issue with them is that they are not indexed very well; there is a lot of space between marks. But I doubt they would fail, they are lightened but no holes for cracks to travel to.
 
Have you spoken directly to Roger Caddell at Aim.........to make sure hardware life timing is not feasible?
 
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