Cam degreeing. I totally don't understand.
An issue I am thinking of is these newer outsourced parts, what if the "dots " are marked wrong. i have always ran mine dot to dot, but have degreed cams in tech school I have done it before but it was many years ago, and I probably didn't truly understand what i was doing. The teacher was like "good work" I said " i still dont know what i did...:)
I've seen dots wrong, and dots missing, or even more confusing: the combination of triangles, squares and circles instead of dots.
Degreeing is just ensuring that valve events happen when they're supposed to. With symmetric cam lobes, the 'centerline' of a lobe is easy to find by measuring a known lifter displacement on either side of the lobe, and then splitting the difference to give a value that corresponds to the center of the lobe at a given crankshaft orientation.
Look at it this way, if the intake valve is supposed to close at 70 degrees ABDC (usually the most important number), and is an advertised 295 (@.002 lifter dispalcement) lobe - the intake valve must open 295 degrees before, which is 45 BTDC. So, 45 degrees, plus 180 from TDC to BDC, plus 70 = 295. Follow?
Now, to get intake centerline (mid point between the ends of the 295 degree) you can go from 45 plus 147.5 (295/2 = 147.5) which gets you 147.5-45 = 102.5 ATDC. Or alternatively, 180+70-147.5=102.5. The 180 is the degrees between TDC and BDC.
Basically, you're relating where the center of the intake lobe is back to the angle of the crankshaft at that point in rotation. Make sense?
In order to KNOW that your valve events are accurate, you must degree the cam. Dots can move, chains can have slack, lifter bores can be off of centerline, etc.
