Trick to reinstalling tach gear?

Help me out, I gotta be missing something simple. I replaced the tach guide, o-ring, and seal on my 79 KZ750.

The oil leak I was trying to fix seems to be gone. But the tach's not working.

I pulled the cable off and fired up the engine and confirmed the tach gear isn't spinning.

Is there some trick to reinstalling the tach gear? I've tried and tried to get it to mate up with the worm gear on the cam. But nothing is working. Feeling like a total noob here. What am I missing?

Can you pull it out to see if it is broken off? I bent one putting my cam in years ago. There is a bevel at the helical gear. It's pretty weak.
Steve

Yeah i pulled the tach gear back out and it looked fine.

I've only ever removed / installed these 3 times and none were on a '750 but they were always such a herculean effort to get it pulled out. Liberal amounts of PB were always needed with much back 'n forth on the spark plug socket to finally tease it free of the case.

The point being, the oxidation seems to make the bore really resistant to putting the gear back in, so is it possible that you're just not getting it to seat fully inward and possibly allowing the gear to simply flex below the camshaft's mating gear instead of seating into the case and engaging the cam?

What I don't understand is it goes beneath the cam. When the cam turns it is forced to the stop behind it and can't go anywhere. Is it possable you have the cams reversed? Not being a smart A$$ but just asking.
Steve

Cams are right and the tach worked before i pulled the tach gear.

I guess I'm going to pull the valve cover and see if i can tell what's up.

Well, I don't know how I did this, but this is clearly the problem.



I thought I was pretty careful inserting the tach gear. But apparently not careful enough.

I'm going to start a new thread about just how screwed I am here.

:ohmy: OMFG. I hope the head is OK at least.
Steve