I really could have used a second person here, but my girlfriend didn’t have much interest in helping out
I had a scare first of all with dropping the cam chain on one side. It had wire on it but I was moving it and dropped one side. It dropped about halfway down but I was able to recover it with a telescoping magnet. My eBay chain breaker tool pushed the pin out of the old chain with no problem.
I put the two bearings on each side of my camshaft and placed the camshaft in position with the large tick mark facing up. Then I made sure the crank was still at TDC and I started trying to get the chain on. I pulled as hard as I could and it didn’t seem like enough to get the chain on so I used some sockets and washers on the engine studs to allow me to screw on the head bits to tighten everything down. I pulled as hard as I could again and again and it still didn’t seem like enough. Finally I decided to just go with it and see if I was wrong and it turned out I was wrong. Once I had tags stuffed in the cam chain gallery to hold them tight onto the cam gear and I removed the wire, sure enough the chain was in proper position to get the master link in. I popped it in and then check to see if the crank/cam were still in position after all the finagling and my cam was slightly off
But now I know that when it looks like the two ends of the chain are nowhere near close enough to get the master link in, you actually may be good. So the second time around it went waaaay easier.
But this was only the beginning of my woes. When I went to use my eBay chain tool to river the new master link, which I thought should have been the easiest part of this ordeal, it turns out the steel in the master link pin was harder than the steel in my chain tool so instead of smashing the end of the link (which was already dimpled/hollow to facilitate riveting) it just marred my riveter up. Eventually I got both pins riveted by reworking my riveter in my drill with a flat file in order to give it more of a rounded point. You can see the imprint from the end of the link pin in the end of the soft steel In my riveter in the picture. I spent way too long getting those two little pins riveted...
I measured the width of the rivets afterward and they were sufficiently large to make me comfortable. I didn’t write the measurements down though so I can’t recall what they were now. I didn’t do much documenting through the cam chain process because it was so difficult and intense. Props to all of you who not only have done this without a second set of hands, but also thoroughly document it.
Finally, I put a bead of Black Permatex down and Poured some motor oil on the bearings and down the cam chain then greased the cam lobes. One question I had at this point was how I know the camshaft is centered, but eventually I discovered it is the points and advance unit housings that center it. This seemed kind of strange to me though. My tappet screws were backed out so the head cover went on easily.