Cam & timing
On teardown, the following things were noted.
New cam & lifters, new solid steel timing gears.
Problems:
Camshaft that came out appeared to be new, but had several prematurely wiped lobes.
Lifters were also dead from failed lobes.
Cam was sticking out front of block, so thrust plate was bent/cracked.
Oil squirter was threaded too deep into plate, so oil flow to squirter was restricted and plate was bent & jacked off of block, resulting in leakage behind plate.
Timing cover was very bent around boltholes from overtightening to correct oil leakage.
Fixes:
New USA camshaft and new lifters.
Good used steel thrust plate, from later model 2F.
Good used (unbent) plate and squirter set to correct depth.
Good used timing cover with latemodel reinforcement around bottom bolts.
Got a few pics of assembly:
Steel cam thrust plate (and all correct hardware after coming out of tank).
Thrust plate installed on new camshaft with the good almost new timing gear from previous rebuild.
The clean, unbent timing plate, with sguirter at correct depth, just flush with oil transfer slot.
Then it all goes together: gasket with grey FIPG, timing plate & new torx screws, cam & thrustplate, timing cover with gasket & a little more FIPG, harmonic balancer. The timing cover is installed loosely with screw barely started, then balancer is whacked on to center up the seal and alignment sleeve inside cover. Then cover screws are lightly torqued down. Again, there is RTV drying, so this all has to happen pretty quick to ensure a good seal. There's no time for cleaning hands, taking pics and getting dirty again.
Who knows which tab gets staked against nut and why? Is it the 11:00 or the 2:00?
