Verdt å prøve?
Hey everyone, I wanted to pass on the results of an experiment that I'd been thinking about doing for quite some time.
Since we have non interference engines, and only one cam is connected to the CAS (intake for 1.6 and exhaust for 1.

Our cars have a valve overlap (intake and exhaust valves open at the same time to evacuate exhaust gases) of 20*. This is good for naturally aspirated cars, but not for boosted cars since boost pressure is essential leaking out of that overlap.
This could be tightened up with adjustable cam gears, but since we have one cam that isn't attached to anything sensitive to its position, we can also just rotate that cam gear. Each gear has 46 teeth. That would be 7.8 degrees per tooth, but we must remember that the crank turns twice per cam rotation, so adjusting our cam gear would actually come out to a 15.6* of change (because valve events are recorded in relation to the position of the crank). This is a lot, but since 20* of overlap is so huge for a boosted engine, retarding (clockwise) the intake cam gear (1.

I had been thinking about this for some time now and decided to try it on my 1997 1.8L engine that receives 6lbs of boost from my m45. IT WORKED AMAZINGLY! though I do feel like there has been a bit of a power band shift to the top end (as expected from retarding the whole of the valve cycle) the extra torque from getting that extra 15+ degrees of time of the cylinder being filled with pressurized air is beautiful. I wouldn't dare to give any kind of hard numbers from my butt dyno, but for free gains, I'd say it's well worth the time it takes.
Obviously, you tinker at you own risk, but for my engine in my car ('97, manual trans, manual cams, m45/62mm nose pulley, intercooler, iridium spark plugs, throttle body heater delete, intake manifold heat insulator gasket, big injectors with e85 fuel, managed by TDR fuel card and JR boost timing control unit set to 0) it made a noticeable difference at no cost.