gear drives

96darkhorse said:

does anybody sell any geardrives for our cars that wont need any machining and WILL FIT under the stock or aftermarket cover? gonna be doing h/c/i soon so im trying to get all other little stuff i may need/replace....they sell some for pretty cheap on ebay (mustangwarehouse sells some for a cheap price). are those any good?? they state for 85 and up 5.0/5.8

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I wouldn't buy something like a geardrive off of eBay. What kind of set is it? Floating-idler or fixed-idler?

I'd consider it if it were a fixed-idler. Floating-idler; forget about it.

Harmonics exist in both types of geardrives and in chains. As the lines of the chain exit one sprocket, they tend to want to continue accelerating in a circular path rather than continuing in a straight line onward to the next sprocket. This is what you hear as "jumped time." However, because the timing chain is so short, these effects are negligible, at most.

Floating-idler geardrives will probably last the life of the engine. The driver's side idler (because of the design) gets loaded with force that attempts to wedge it between the crank and cam sprockets, creating much more, unnecessary friction. Just imagine your self getting one of those cheapy sets off eBay and the driver's side idler getting eaten and launched through the front cover. Unlikely, yes. Possible, probably.

Being that fixed-idler gears are somewhere in the (I think) $500 dollar range for a reputable name, I'd stick with a chain.

And to answer your question, I believe the floating-idler gear drives do fit under MOST front covers. Fixed-idlers do not and you may have to machine the block for either application.

Joe