Reusing stock camshaft gear, what to do?

[J-F]

Hi there,

Long time lurker, first time poster

I have a bad camshaft gear on a stock 1300 single port rebuild.
I did the basic checking when I rebuild it, to see how much "walk" it gets and if it will pop out while turning the engine backward.
Seemed ok, but after less than 300km, it started to make an unusual noise at idle. I dismantle the engine and found wear spots on the cam bearings and marks on the outside tooths'gear.
Turned out the gear was bent and put axial load on the camshaft.
I still have the original camshaft with his gear and it make more sense to use a perfectly good parts that match than a chinese knockoff that don't. Removing it is not a problem, but how to reuse it on the new cam?
I thought to use button heads M8x1.0 10.9 bolts, but I don't know if is necessary to machine something out of the gear?
Thanks

[Ol'fogasaurus]

J-F, reusing stuff isn't always a bad idea but then there are things that shouldn't be reused especially after they start to wear as that can cause other things allied to them to wear faster which can cause one or both or the overall major assy's to fail. When stuff, like close tolerance engine parts, wear the distances between parts get larger/sloppier and bad things can start to happen. Engine and trans parts are good examples of this.

When parts are made there is plus or minus a tolerance given to each part in the assy, contacting part(s) or assy and the overall assy. Too tight and things wear faster and too loose and you get too much slop and things can jam/break.

Lee

[ONEBADBUG]

Drill and tap the cam for 5/16 - 24, and spot face the gear so the bolt will clear the cam. The cam gear size (plus 1, -1 etc) is correct when you have the crank and cam in one half of the case, and turning the engine makes the cam rise and fall back down into the bearing again.

[J-F]

Thanks.
I removed the gear from the stock camshaft. I will bring it to a machine shop to have it spot faced and drill to clear M8 bolts.
My original gear was -2.
I may have overthink this job a bit. Took me 10min to remove the rivets and when I compare it with a generic replacemement cam gear it was pretty obvious what to do to make it fit.