Hi All, I have my parents VH6 with 139000km .It never has had a timing gear . With not much use for the last 15 years, and now we need to go on a bit of a trip in October to a wedding anniversary for which it was used as a wedding car 30 years ago . I would like to replace the timing gear , but do I do fibre or alloy ? Thanks Mark.

Even with a new set of gears if you go for a alloy cam gear it will be noisy . But the slight noise is better than a stripped fibre gear in the middle of nowhere , believe I have been there .

Fibre gear ran thru blue & black 6s too. Had a few fail in the 90s when I owned close to dozen over a 5 year period, yet my old man had a VK that did 360,000km on it's original one.
About 50% of the blue & black 6s I stripped down in the 90's either had an aftermarket alloy gear already fitted, or the fibre original was worn to the point they would soon fail.

As Byron noted, get the 2-gear set, making sure they're helical cut, and you'll barely hear the increase in noise.
It's the straight cut gears that whine like the neighbour's kids stuck in the back seat. You don't want them unless you're after the street poser sound these days.

The straight cut gears were aftermarket - and very popular in the 80s through to the mid 90s on red & even blue 6s. Several of my school mates drove LC & LJ toranas with them fitted.
It seemed like I was the odd one out for not liking the harsh sound they produced.

I remember one guy running the "top cog" V-belt on his alt/crank/water pump pulley, and fitting a piece of bent metal to rub on the back of that belt to recreate the sound.
Yep, completely stupid thing to do (and he had to replace that belt regularly) but that's how popular the noise was.


I have to disagree with your take on red/blue/black though /quote "I don't know about all your black and blue motors as they were just coming out as I got out . But I know one thing , they were all crap compared to a pre ADR27 red motor , either six or eight cylinder "
I'd have a black EFI 6 over any of the reds, even the XU1. They were a damn good final incarnation of the Holden 6.
And the black V8 (well, the red painted black one) was the most powerful carby Holden V8 to be factory fitted to a production car by Holden (thus ruling out things like HDT strokers etc fitted after production).
You also can't forget the 5000 homologation 304s in the '85 VK - factory B-cast heads and all the good bits. Almost an L34, but readily available to the public in SL, Berlina and Calais, but only with the M21 behind it.