Mustang and Ford Performance Forums banner

Replacement 9-Way Adjustable Secondary Sprockets

23K views 69 replies 17 participants last post by  4sdvenom 
#1 · (Edited)
Cloyes has stopped manufacturing their adjustable secondary gears for the 4V Modmotor for more than a year now. The inventory in the distribution channel has dried up and the gears are essentially not available anymore.

I was speaking with the folks at Boundry's pump division. They currently make a billet heat treated 21 tooth 4340 crank gear for the 4.6L and 5.4L engines. Travis has been considering making 9-Way adjustable gears for the cams but has not yet.

If Boundry could make a heat treated 4340 9-Way adjustable secondary gear set available again how much interest is there out there for this type of product?


Ed
 
#2 ·
We REALLY REALLY REALLY need the aftermarket to step up for the 4v guys. Stuff is getting harder to find and if you do find stuff you will pay a premium. I wish they had the aftermarket like a pushrod or 2v. So when I melt a head I can just pick up the phone and order another one. It's making me want to move up to coyote stuff or back to good old pushrod stuff. Just my opinion! So yes we need them! Thanks ed

Sent from my SM-G955U using Tapatalk
 
#3 ·
Hang in there with the Modmotors, Nick. The Coyote platform in supercharged form is more tender than it appears. The smaller bore on the Modmotor, the longer valves and straighter ports all add up to a better platform choice.

The Coyote variable valve timing is necessary for low speed torque in the n/a engine. As anyone who has used a blown 4.6 will tell you there is no shortage of low speed torque and there is no variable valve timing. Isn't it interesting that Mihovitz does not use a Coyote in his race car ...


Ed
 
#5 ·
That would be fantastic, Ed. Travis makes some great stuff and there definitely is a market for these gears. Just too bad Cloyes quit since their design really works. If someone steps up, they’d probably sell these easily.
 
#6 ·
I know that is the same opinion I have, Joe. However, I am a bit surprised that more people have not offered thoughts or interest on this thread. Makes me sort of question my assumptions.

I had bumped into Travis at the PRI show in December and had a great discussion with him. Top shelf guy. He has been toying with the idea of producing these for several months now. Predictably other alligators in the swamp are getting all the attention right now however.

One of the aggravating issues with the Cloyes stuff was the fact they would have bad batches from time to time and the expected timing changes for the keyway used would not occur. Apparently the keyways were not consistently or precisely cut in the gears. Cloyes $35 or $39 pricing was sort of a tip off about the quality of the product but for a long time it was the only offering out there. Today shops like L&M are having custom pieces made to fill the need but that also comes with custom price points.



Ed
 
#8 ·
I’d be interested in a set. I’m sure there are quite a few that would be interested, but the reality is that there just isn’t a lot of traffic here anymore. Modfords has a heck of an archive, but nobody posts here anymore.
 
#9 ·
Ed there would be a ton of interest. There has been 3-4 posts just this past week on Facebook asking what to do since you can't buy the Cloyes anymore.

Since you are not on FB, if you want I can post up in the appropriate groups to get you a ballpark figure.

Let me know.

--Joe
 
#12 ·
Thanks Joe, please do.

Ed

Ed there would be a ton of interest. There has been 3-4 posts just this past week on Facebook asking what to do since you can't buy the Cloyes anymore.

Since you are not on FB, if you want I can post up in the appropriate groups to get you a ballpark figure.

Let me know.

--Joe
 
#10 ·
I'd buy two sets today.

As others have mentioned it has died around here. I fell off the map for a while, almost 11 years, and recently have been getting back into the car. How much has moved to social media platforms is not surprising but it still feels weird to get on a Facebook group for a car since that last I remember I was coming here. It also use to be easy to get parts for the 4.6 Modular stuff and now it is starting to turn into this "special" yesteryear piece. This place is still special since historically for Terminators is was the place to be when the cars were new. Some may argue SVTP but I spent most my time here so I'm biased I suppose. Ed, I guess what I'm driving at is you can't take a 11hr sample from this thread when it was first started and base an interest on this part off of that. But I do remember a time when that was probably possible. Now I check this forum once a week. I use to be on here at times once an hour.
 
#13 ·
Good to see you back, Michael. The site participation has gradually migrated more towards the engine builder side of the street and race car stuff. You should feel right at home in the discussions. :)

Ed
 
#14 ·
Travis should get my sample sprockets this week so it looks like it is about to become game on time.

The Cloyes sprockets were manufactured with an increased root diameter on the sprocket to take up chain slack. It was an effort back in the day to avoid having to tension the passenger side chain with the backwards OEM tensioner. The idea was to use a larger root diameter on the sprockets, pick up the slack there and then not use / need the OEM secondary tensioner. The approach did not pick up many followers and the correctly designed secondary tensioner became the preferred solution for everyone.

I believe Travis is going to deliver his usual excellent job of product design and manufacturing.

Ed
 
#18 · (Edited)
I would definitely buy a set. I have a brand new motor in the works and have nothing yet for timing gears. I do not want to use stock timing gears either in a straight up setting or deal with the hassle of filing and what not to the stock gears to dial them in.

Edit:
The filing is for the primary gears, but the adjustable secondary gears are something I definitely need too.

Count me for a set.
Ken
 
#19 ·
Several of you guys have PM'd me asking about a billet steel replacement for the crank sprocket. Boundry offers one that is made from 4340 steel and heat treated to a Rockwell 56C or better. These are tough pieces! Here is a link to the Boundry site => Billet Crank Sprocket.

These are the 21 tooth crank sprockets not the smaller 20 tooth (I believe) sprocket that was used on the late production supercharged 5.4's. This sprocket will work with the standard 42 tooth primary gears on the exhaust cams like all 4.6L engines use.

Ed
 
#20 · (Edited)
Cloyes has stopped manufacturing their adjustable secondary gears for the 4V Modmotor for more than a year now. The inventory in the distribution channel has dried up and the gears are essentially not available anymore.

I was speaking with the folks at Boundry's pump division. They currently make a billet heat treated 21 tooth 4340 crank gear for the 4.6L and 5.4L engines. Travis has been considering making 9-Way adjustable gears for the cams but has not yet.

If Boundry could make a heat treated 4340 9-Way adjustable secondary gear set available again how much interest is there out there for this type of product?

Ed
How can it possibly be that no one makes an adjustable gear??? Did people just stop building 4 valve motors? NOOOOOOOO
What are people suppose to do? Aren't mod motors expensive enough to build as it is. I guess we need to price the average guy out of everything right? God knows we can't afford to do much of anything these days :wallbash:
I just sent him a message on his contact page

- - - Updated - - I
 
#22 ·
I just got off the phone with the Comp guys, Russ. Those Comp sprockets are limited in their range of adjustment but more significantly they are only for the primary chains. The guy I spoke to at comp didn't understand why you couldn't run a primary gear/sprocket as a secondary. He obviously was uninformed. It turns out Comp has no secondary 9-Way adjustable gears for the Modmotor. They do have some telephone support people who don't understand why or how adjustable secondary gears are different from adjustable primary gears.

The real world answer to whether or not they have 9-Way adjustable secondary gears is they not only do not have them, nor do they know why they are necessary. Sad testimonial ...


Ed
 
#23 ·
Thanks, Ed. Do any of them sell all 4? I only see the intake sprockets being sold.

I just got off the phone with the Comp guys, Russ. Those Comp sprockets are limited in their range of adjustment but more significantly they are only for the primary chains. The guy I spoke to at comp didn't understand why you couldn't run a primary gear/sprocket as a secondary. He obviously was uninformed. It turns out Comp has no secondary 9-Way adjustable gears for the Modmotor. They do have some telephone support people who don't understand why or how adjustable secondary gears are different from adjustable primary gears.

The real world answer to whether or not they have 9-Way adjustable secondary gears is they not only do not have them, nor do they know why they are necessary. Sad testimonial ...

Ed
 
#27 · (Edited)
Right now the best bet is finding a set of 'used but not abused' Cloyes sprockets. The challenge is that Cloyes appears to have had a QC problem at some point in time with the sprockets. The occasional bad sprocket's marked cam offset in degrees was not what you expected when you chose that particular keyway. Frequently these whoops gears would/could make little to no difference in cam phasing from keyway to keyway. To their credit, Cloyes would exchange those items for good stock. The problem now is that Cloyes is no longer making the product so if you get a bad set, then you've got a bad set. Sort of a buyer be ware situation these days because Cloyes no longer makes the gears..

Craig (Stangman105) was recently telling me about some clown on eBay that was offering a pair of the Cloyes 9-Way's for over $1,000. Talk about an opportunist! We will see more of this kind of stuff as time goes on. Even if the gears were reasonably priced (whatever that means) how do you credibly explain to the guy who sold them to you that they are bad. If he didn't know, he won't believe you. His response will be something like learn how to use them. If he did know, he clearly doesn't care and certainly won't acknowledge it because he was trying to dump them on someone else and you just happened to be the someone else. I'll give you two guesses about how that story ends and the first guess doesn't count.

The best solution right now is to wait out the look see effort that Boundry is giving the opportunity. If they decide there is enough aftermarket interest to build the gears then we will have a production source for product. If they don't then it is going to fall to some individual entrepreneur who is willing to risk the sunk costs of development and production.

Let me give you an example of what I am talking about;

For purposes of this example I am mostly pulling the numbers out of the air, although several may be closer to the mark than you might expect for SWAG's
.

SetUp cost - 1,000
Spindle time for one gear - 15 minutes
Spindle time - $70/hr
Raw materials - $5
Tooling $1,000
Tooling Life cycle -10,000 pcs
Cutters $50
Cutter life cycle - 100 pcs.
Heat treat - $500/ 100pcs
Order quantity 1000 pcs

With those sorts of variables one gear would have a production cost of ~$29 and a unit run cost of $29,000. for the first 500 sets. Add to that the cost of packaging, say $2 per set and you are basically $60 per pair of gears manufacturing cost. That means those gears at a fire sale would go for $120 per pair and at fair market value would look more like $180 per pair and reducing production volumes only raises unit costs.

BTW anyone out there have $30K burning a hole in their pocket that would like to take a shot at this kind of project? Most enthusiasts will say no. That means we need a business to step up to the plate and roll the dice that they can sell the entire production run in a reasonable period of time.

Interesting gamble isn't it ...

Ed
 
#28 ·
I would be interested in a set of adjustable gears as well. As good as the Coyote /voodoo power plants are , I prefer to stick with the 4.6 DOHC motor and the aftermarket support for the 4.6 is still good. At least Ford Performance still offers a complete timing gear set for the 4.6 DOCH motor although such a set does not have adjustable gears, but it's better than nothing.
 
#31 ·
I believe there is a possibility that we could find three sources for these gears going forward — which would be good news from a consumer point of view. Competitive offerings in general improve a product and usually result in the most competitive prices.

The yes, but moment here is that, the multiple providers must each see adequate sales volume to support a sound business model. If they do not, the number of providers decreases until the remaining providers do. If that minimum adequate sales volume can not be met by a single provider, the part will disappear from the aftermarket as the various providers repurpose their investment dollars to other parts that people do buy in adequate quantity to make a viable business model.


Ed
 
#32 ·
#34 ·
just to chime in with posts 2, 3, and 4 - i too would always like to see parts being made available for the mod motors, if only to keep the niche thriving. owning two mildly modded but daily driven terminators, i feel like i am pretty much "locked in" with the modmotors for life. even though i may not need these particular parts right now, i know there will come a day when i will probably need them. same goes for the parts availibilty through ford. i fully intend to keep these cars for the rest of my life as my daily driven machines.

i am not on facebook or any sort of social media - wouldn't want to and wouldn't know where to start. this board and svtp are pretty much the only places that i frequent.

but this current environment sort of reminds me of my youth, when i was a "mopar enthusiast." at the time i owned an about 10-20 year old dodge b-body, big block engine. i remember at the time it was very, very difficult getting parts for the car. same was true for any of the hemi stuff. it seemed like chrysler was mostly interested in pushing their current lineup (turbo 4 cylinders, etc) and did not really support the 60s/early70s musclecars. fast forward 30+ years, and from what i understand you can pretty much literally purchase anything for these cars, through chrysler and elsewhere.
 
#35 ·
I feel your pain, Chris. I had lightweight '63 and '64 factory race Max Wedge and race Hemi's for racing and drove a 66 Street Hemi as my daily driver and tow car. When Chrysler decided to stop racing ProStock, stuff dried up fast.

Ford did a similar but sneakier deed on the Modmotor. They needed a new shiny object in the show room to sell cars and the Coyote narrowed up a bit and with TiVCT was just the ticket. The problem was when they narrowed the engine they also shortened the intake valves about ⅝ of an inch. This put a sharper knee and less attractive short side radius in the ports. The variable cam timing saved the engine at both ends of the rpm scale - in n/a trim.

In a race only supercharged build, which doesn't use or want variable cam timing, the old engine was equally as good and arguably better because the straighter ports and better short side radius (in the GT heads) produced more power up top. Ever wonder why Mihovitz never went the Coyote route? Sort of curious ...


Ed
 
This is an older thread, you may not receive a response, and could be reviving an old thread. Please consider creating a new thread.
Top