What kind of clearance do you need between the chain and the oil pump? It's pretty close there with the spacers on. I'm pretty darn sure I got the crank gear seated all the way. It slid on all the way by hand... pretty tight though. Then I put the old one on anyway and gave it a tap or two very lightly... pretty sure it was seated.

I turned the motor a few times and it doesn't hit...???

Also, who has modified the oil pickup tube due to the offset of the spacers? I installed my new o-ring with lots of oil on it and inside the oil pump seat and didn't fully tighten the pickup tube bolt until the oil pump was torqued down. I did notice that it moved it out a bit, but it seemed to seat nicely. I guess we'll see!
Thanks

 

Nobody's running this setup?

 

I put in a Crane double roller in,It came w/spacers and the friggin timing cover was hitting the oil pump.I had to shave some material off the cover and file some of the pump so it would fit right.I didn't mod the oil pickup tube,went on pretty easy.

 

Welcome to the forum! I would guess .040 clearance with the chain pushed forward on the sprocket and the crank pushed forward in the engine you would have plenty of clearance. That may be hard to actually check though. I'm running the Crane double roller chain which has "Rollmaster" stamped on it so I assume that is who make it for Crane. I had the exact same problem with little clearance. Specially when used with and incorrectly cut aftermarket timing cover (but that is another long story ). The spacer that was shipped with my chain was aluminum. I think the aluminum used was too soft. As you can see in the photos below you can see the marks where the oil pump pressed into the aluminum making even less clearance. I had a mechanist friend make me a set of steel spacers that was .175 thick, .057 thicker than the .118 spacers that shipped with the chain. Had plenty of room with the thicker spacers. I cut the balancer just a tad to be sure it would not contact the oil pump drive gear but I think it would have cleared just fine without being cut. If you want to make a set of spacers the dimensions I used is shown below. Had no problem with the pickup tube, mine seemed like it was a little long to start with. Just be sure you get the tube up in the pump before you start the bolt, you can have problems with the oring if you pull the pickup tube up into the pump with the bolt.

Good luck

Notice the marks where the oil pump pressed into the bottom aluminum spacer that shipped with the chain. Top is my new thicker steel spacer.



Notice the half circle mark where the chain contacted the pump. This was actually due to a problem with an aftermarket timing cover.



These are the dimensions that I used to make my spacers. Just make sure they are ground parallel so they don't put the pump in a bind.

 

SpeedyZ was your timing cover pushing on your pump into the timing chain?

 

I did the rollmaster double with a TSP ported pump. Used the old sprocket as a punch/guide for the rollmaster crank sprocket. Used the provided spacers, haven't had a problem in 3 years. Oil pressure still 40+ at idle, even with a bad cylinder

 

I recently installed the Rollmaster double. I didn't have any problems with the chain hitting the back of the pump, but the timing cover wouldn't fit on. I had to do a little grinding on the front of the pump in two places. On the left side, I ground down the pump where the pickup tube bolts to the pump. On the right , I ground off some material where the Allen head screw for the relief valve screws in. I just made it so there was a 45* angle rather than the 90* angle of the two machined surfaces. There is plenty of material in those areas, so your not hurting anything. The timing cover is very thin, so I didn't want to touch that.
The next problem is: Will the underdrive pulley bottom out before it's seated all the way on the crank snout.

 

Yep, that is exactly what happened. It was an aftermarket cover. I put the chain and pump on and turned the motor several times while working on it and never had a problem. I bolted the cover on and never noticed it was hitting the pickup tube, but the next time I turned the crank (by hand)it sounded bad! Took it all apart and found the cover was hitting where the oil tube came up. It was hitting so hard it pushed the pump down onto the chain! I took the chain off, spacer out, and reinstalled the pump like factory and checked the cover and it still hit. Didn't hit until you installed the pickup tube. Had to grind a ton of stuff out of the inside of the cover to make it fit. But once ground out it fit great, even with .175 thick spacers.

 

WOW,That su**s.But at least its working.I'm going to double check mine today before I start bolting everything back together.I wonder why nobody said anything about this before getting a double roller chain.Unless they did,And I didn't see it.

 

I never seen it anywhere either! What I would recommend to do is once all your pump, spacers, and pickup tube is in place, put the cover on without any gasket and check for clearance. I put the cover up there push it against the engine and move it just a bit then pull it off and look for marks where something touched it. Then grind off the mark and try again, finally you will get it to fit without hitting. Then put the gasket on and finish the install. The front cover gasket is .060 thick so this will leave you at least .060 clearance between the cover and anything else.

 

I used the spacers that came with my rollmaster, everything worked just fine. Front cover went on, so did the ASP underdrive pulley, which did not have to be machined as some people seem to have done.
Check out the 5th,6th and 7th picutres down from the top on my web page:
http://mysite.verizon.net/vze6ydad/id4.html

 

I realized that I was having clearance issues with the timing cover, on an F-body (don't know if that makes a dif.). I did as SpeedyZ suggested, and put it on and moved it around and then ground off the touched part, I MOSTLY did the grinding on the pump though.

I used a sharpie and marked the THREE touching areas (on the pump and the cover) then rubbed and then ground. Took quite a while, I removed alot of material. I hope the double roller is worth it. Kinda wish I'd just went with the LS2 chain. O-well, hope it all works out!

 

I checked with MTI regarding the ASP underdrive pulley, and David said they have the pulley machined by ASP to fit with a double roller.
When I checked with Thunder, I was told the pulley would need to be machined to fit, and I would have to find a shop to do it. Bottom line: I guess it depends where you buy it.

I still don't understand why some people have no problem with the stock timing cover hitting and others do. As I said before, I wouldn't grind the cover.It's not very thick.

 

I remember reading somewhere (I think on this forum) that all the old ASP under drive pulleys needed to be cut but the new ones they designed that into them so they no longer need cutting. That is probably why your getting different answers.


I bet the front covers are a little different over the years. I had no problem with my 2001 LS6 factory cover, it cleared even with my thick .175 spacers. My problem was with an aftermarket cover, which didn't clear even without spacers.