I'm not asking what to set my cam gears to....
I'm wondering how exactly I adjust them.

I have Crower 280 cams and HKS cam gears. I want to see if adjusting the cam timing improves anything for me.

I found a zillion threads about cam timing settings and what cam gears are cool and should I get cam gears and so on..

But no instruction on actually adjusting them/changing the settings.

Thanks
Chris

 

I used the closed end of a 17mm wrench to rotate the motor via the cam gear bolt 3 times clockwise to TDC (all timing marks lined up). Loosen the hex bolts on one cam gear and adjusted the timing to the next cam gear etched mark with the 17mm wrench on the cam gear center bolt (1 mark on the cam gear usually = 2*, check your cam gears for the increment). Once I was done I torqued all hex bolts to 12ft lbs and did the same for the next cam gear. Sorry, it's been awhile, but I can't for the life of me remember which way advances and which way retards timing, hopefully someone can add that important bit.

 

Cool, thanks. I would think clockwise would be advance and counterclockwise would be retard. Right?

Damn, I bought the car with the cams and gears and it seems that my settings are 0/-6

That can't be right Although, it's making great power...HMMM. Maybe the cams were that far off. Stupid Brian Crower stuff...wouldn't have been MY first choice.
I suspected that maybe the cams didn't line up with tdc like everything else but they do. So it had to be that when they installed them (IPS in ohio) they needed to retard the Exh. -6 to get it to run right?

Also, are you sure it's legit to rotate the engine with the cam gear bolt?