A friend of mine has a set of AEM cam gears that he wants to sell me. Is there anything that I should know before buying used?

 

well its not really the thing of buying used at this point you are buying the wrong company. aem cam gears only have 3 bolts to secure the gear and just think if they slipped with your engine like they have with other people. you have just screwed your engine and timing. well if you insist on buying them then i dont see any probs but i wouldnt buy those gears instead go with a diff company like dc or something

 

how many bolts do factory cam gears have?

 

none! the whole point of having the bolts is to adjust it. factory gears arent adjustable.

i hear that toda cams are among the best because they only allow 5 degrees of adjustment either way whereas other have 10 degrees either way so that if the gear does slip, your valves wont open as much and your timing wont be off as much.

 

the toda cam gears are good. They are made from a different aluminum from others and are stronger I believe.

 

I have heard of this happeneing more than once. I would not go with a cam gear with less than 4 bolts. I am just another person on here who could not afford to rebuild my engine if something stupid like that happened to it. Toda does make great stuff(4 bolt). DC Sports are well priced an better quality than the AEM's(5 bolt as opposed to 3). Skunk 2's are nicer (6 bolt). If you have the $$$..gow tih Toda...7075 Aluminum is great stuff and much stronger than 6061, which is what most of the other manufacturers use.

 

how do you know what adjustment that you get the most power from......hopefully you won't say dyno.

also, why would aem cam gears slip as opposed to factory ones.

in closing, is it true that you won't really get any power from the unless you have new cams?

 

Obviously, people buy cam gears to advance/retard their engines' timing. AEM cam gears, as with all gears, can slip because there are just a few bolts holding their position instead of a fixed gear that's not adjustable(stock). AEM's are more notorious for slipping due to the fact that they only have 3 bolts to keep them tight. There is a lot of torque on those bolts, and honestly I just don't think that 3 bolts is enough....more is better. You can still use adjustable cams gears on stock cams to advance your timing. You will see some gains, mostly through the midrange of the powerband...it's not a huge amount of power, but every bit helps, but obviously they are intended to be used in conjunction with aftermarket cams to fine tune the timing to see the maximum amount of power.

 

sorry buddy, no way around it. dyno dyno dyno

that said, it probably wouldn't be worth dynotuning your car on stock cams.

 

true true.
ok well i looked on modacar for some new cams but the only ones that i saw were for vtec engines. i was thinking i could just throw in some type r ones. i guess not.