[Dan McEachern]

Just ran on to this and a few comments- why on earth are you tightening the cam gear nut to 100 ft-lbs??? 30-40 is plenty IMO. 2nd queston, how did you keep the cam from rotating while you tightened the nut? The bore, od and backside of my blanks are all machined in the same setup to keep them concentric and square. If the cam gear was wobbling, that will certainly cause backlash variations. Most of the time this is due to a cam nose flange that is out of square or dirt between the flange and the gear.
As others have said, runout of the crank gear can be caused by an improper crank grind and its entirely possible that the crank nose is running out because the crank grinder indicated the front journal rather than the gear area or the nose. If you pull it down again, take the pulley off and put an indicator in the crank nose.

If you want to return the gear, I'll be happy to replace it, inspect the old one and post here what I find. By the way, Bill Stipe makes great products but we all need to double check each others work solve these issues.
Dan

Thanks, Dan