Timing gears or chains???

[78MachoWagon]

Anyone have experience with timing gears. The guy at the machine shop is trying to talk me out of them on my 440 rebuild. He says they will get anoying after a while, even the quiet ones. I myself am practically deaf any way, between 50 cal and 25mm fire in the military and the fact of driving around town in my jeep with the top off with banks headers and a flowmaster pipe on 35's, I'm pretty deaf!!! So far on the build up I have forged pistons arp bolts on the connecting rods stock crank, picking up Edlebrock rpm heads and maching intake and probably a 750 Edelbrock carb. Ignition is going to be a MSD ready to run distributer.

[Gordon Maney]

Often that setup is called a gear drive. My own opinion is they are really obnoxious. Some street rodders like to use them because they have that sound and the sound is thought to communicate that it is a high performance engine. I think they are loud and annoying. Even if you can't hear it, everyone else will hear it. A chain would work perfectly fine for your needs.

[712edf]

I'd love to put a gear drive on my 440 but agree it probably would get annoying if driven much. Since mine's not driven much a good timing chain will last forever, or at least decades.......Gears drives are generally limited to 3-bolt camshafts on the 440, haven't seen one for the 1-bolt cam, but they may exist. Unless your into some racing type environment with your 440 the biggest "benefit" to the gear drive would be the aforementioned noise "to scare the masses".

[skeely]

unless you are making passes down your local quarter mile track the cloyes or equal roller is the shot. just put a cloyes tru roller in my poly and i suspect it should provide accurate timing for a long time!

[hemibob67]

Timing Chain

I agree. If your not going down the 1/4 mile then stick with the chain.
I have built many 440's and I did one with a gear about 8 years ago. Everybody kept asking me what was wrong with my engine and there was really no benefit to having the gear for me so I tore it down and went back to a chain. Cloyes is a good choice.

[78MachoWagon]

Wow, so the census is no Gear drive. I'm going to get one because they are inexpensive and so I can have the option, I guess not even getting to try one for myself would eat me up becuase I've never had one. I believe the shop is putting a timing chain on anyway, so I'll have the ability to run either. Thank you for the input I have plenty of time to choose. I'll post pics as soon as I get the block back.

[78MachoWagon]

Alright so even my buddy that gave me the engine says it would be irritating. I fold timming chain it is.

[Gordon Maney]

Alright so even my buddy that gave me the engine says it would be irritating. I fold; timing chain it is.

You won't regret making that choice.

[smalltowncowboy]

Ok I will be the odd one here. I ran edelbrock timing gears in a small block 350 and loved them. I had the quiet ones and you couldn't hear them over over the exhaust (weather you were inside or outside the cab) and I never had to worry about the chain streaching.

[78MachoWagon]

Thats what I was thinking too, But I am goint to route my exhaust out right behind the cab out of the front part of the bed. I can only imagine on long trips towing a boat that I may want todrive into the wall from exhaust and a noisy engine.