Anyone using a RCD gear drive for a BBC? Opinions?

Bob

Yep i've had 2. Absolutely some badazz stuff. The first one i used the enderle pump extension and the adapter plate. The little spud that goes in the end of the cam doesn't have a retainer plate so it walked up the drive shaft into the pump extension housing and disengaged from the cam drive. If you go that route you'll need to address that. I put a washer on the pump drive shaft gave it 0.100" or so play and tigg'd it onto the shaft. Never had an issue after that. Second go around i opted for the RCD pump extension and drive shaft, much better piece but pricey. That eliminated the issue i mention above, but you must have the pump extension on the front of the motor as it's what sets camshaft end play. Gets kinda clumsy sometimes when you are degreeing the cam and have the motor sitting on the stand, without the extension in place the cam will fall out of the motor if your stand leans forward and you don't have lifters and what not on it. Has 11 bolts in top sprocket so cam can be degreed in 1 degree increments. Other than those two issues absolutely bad to the bone equipment.

I also run the milodon on my other motor, its really nice equipment too. Camshaft degree is a little less accurate due to only having 7 bolts in the top gear so advance/retard is done in 2 degree increments.

The first RCD i bought was on my blown 555 the second one is on my NA 615, i'll never go back to belts or timing chains (i've had Jesel and high priced chain sets with billet gears). All this noise about harmonics and stuff like that comes with a gear drive, i have not experienced. When you talk with milodon and or RCD they don't seem to hear much about that either. I think the bad rep gear drives get comes from the old dual idler sets that fit under a stock timing cover and were very low quality. These are significantly better quality than the cheap ones.

I have been looking at milodon gear drives. One question, the base of the drive that bolts to the block has two ears that go behind the waterpump. How are you dealing with that in the case of useing a motor plate like in a door car?

Pretty sure Seabass runs one in his Top Dragster.

Don't forget Donovan - I think it is the best piece for the money!

I have one in my engine, very nice piece.

This is also a 14-71 blown application using the Enderle front pump assembly. The RCD was one option Milodon was the other, I need to look at the Donovan also.

I am a bit concerned about the way the Enderle dive is mounted, thanks for the heads up information. Cost is not an issue, (not at this point), reliability is the primary concern.

Bob

We have been running a SUMMERS BROS gear drive on our BBC for almost 20 years.

We also use the cam mounted drive for our Hilborn fuel pump.

This gear drive is obviously bullet proof, it has never been sent in for mnt. and has been on this particular build for about 14 years.

Wooley,

I'm not sure what "ears" you are talking about, both the RCD and Milodon drives i own are on motors with motor plates (both are in dragsters), but both cars run remote mounted water pumps. Can't run a block mounted pump if you are running a cam drive fuel pump.

RPROGAS,

I had both the enderle pump extension on the RCD and the RCD pump extension. Other than the issue with the drive spud backing out of the top gear with the enderle pump extension, that setup worked great. The RCD extension is a real pain in the butt to degree the cam cause the cam kept walking out of the motor when we turned our backs on it and didn't keep a hand on it. If you can deal with that the RCD is likely the best piece. The RCD will force you to have the quick lock clamp on the front so that setup cost an additional 200 bucks or so by the time you buy the adapter and the clamp. The enderle extension setup on either drive does not require that. Stupid thing is with the quick release clamp you now have two quick release options, releasing the quick clamp and removing the enderle pump from the enderle flange by losening the allen bolts in the clamp on the pump. My only guess here is that the original "quick relase" clamp was designed before Enderle made a habit of putting slip collars on the fronts of their pumps. I believe all enderle pumps come with the slip collar for mounting these days.

Kris