[Excaliber]

Hydraulic vs mechanical

Yeah, not applicable to the cam shaft gearing/chaining at all. Must be a reference to the camshaft itself, hyd or solid lifters? Which has little or nothing to do with how the cam is driven.

The OLD Chevy 6's had a fiber cam gear driven by the crankshaft iron (steel, whatever) gear. The fiber was quiet and long lived. I bet most gear drives available today are metal gears, helical cut (angled teeth for smooth gear mesh) and noisy at best! Straight cut teeth on the gears would be REALLY noisy, but stronger (think FULL race application only)!

Ernie