Ken & List, When Tim (Sawmiller) indicated his idler shaft, he said it had an 8 thou offset. Perhaps this problem is mainly one of shoddy assembly. When I looked at my friends 6-1 today, there is nothing to indicate that it is offset, ie: no line, arrow or paint stripe, do we use the location of the oiling groove as an indication? who knows. It would seem that if this offset were installed toward the crank/cam gears, it may be running to deep, causing the sharpened gear teeth and eventual failure. Hopefully Mike will check some of his idler shafts to determine if the 8 thou offset is close to a standard, and if so, in what direction the offset should favor to get as close as possible to proper mesh clearance. The drive to make a solution, though admirable, may be entirely unnecessary, as well as not being as reliable long term. I agree with Rocket and my own somewhat limited experience, gear drive should be the best, followed by chain, the belt is not a viable solution for this application as it is not durable enough (VWs need their belts replaced as do all belt driven cam drives). To sum it up, if the offset idler shaft is standard, the cause for most of the failures could very likely be incorrect assembly, which leaves us just another thing to check for when inspecting our engines before first fire. Ken, hope your up and running soon.
Regards,
Paul
