And now i feel like a dick haha...
Just returned from the machine shop...cams in hand, nearly good to go...Let this be a lesson to anyone messing around with custom cams, or even the stock sticks for that matter...as i never heard of this issue until it happened, at least with these cars:
the twiggys used a through hardened steel dowel pin for alignment (not exactly sure yet on the factory pins, but i'll be pressing one in tonight)...if that thing shears off, as mine did...its almost hopeless to drill out...He had diamond tipped burrs burning up on it, barely even scratching it...he claimed it was so hot that it was simply burning off the resin that holds the diamonds on the burr, and it was going no where...He had to place a washer over the pin hole, and mig up a small 'pile' to the sheared surface, and back it out by hand...which luckily worked...but he claimed if it had sheared any deeper, he wouldn't have had room to get to it...and it would be there permanently...
Also...because of knowing how hard that pin is...its pretty unlikely that it simply broke as i removed the cam gear on my vice, as that would've simply bent the slot in the cam gear's aluminum adjustment plate...I'm now pretty certain it sheared off while driving, and probably moved the cam itself out of position in the process...I'm guessing this is why when i changed my cam gear timing, i had perfect driveability for a few miles with no stalling...but it soon returned to the super lope and stall from before...So...i'm thinking it sheared, and my exhaust cam was changing its own timing haha...
So again, anyone doing this...It is 100% critical to get the sprocket bolt tightened properly...I thought i had it, but was using a strap wrench and was probably getting slightly false torque readings...the bolt wasn't down quite hard enough, and the sprocket slipped...and cut the pin...i won't let that happen again...the pin serves absolutely no other purpose than to set the sprocket perfectly...it is NOT a drive pin...the washer and sprocket bolt handle all of that, and if they aren't torqued to the needed spec...you'll have one hell of an annoying issue...you can run cams without these pins, but it makes lining up the sprocket pretty tough...as even 1 degree off, and you're already making blind adjustments to timing...
he plugged the open ends with a tap and a set screw with loc tite...looks perfect, and i'd imagine that will hold oil pressure just fine (probably better than a press plug would've to begin with)
I now have a factory dowel pin removed from a stock cam...I'll measure it, and see if i can tap that in with a solid hammer...if not, i'll go through some old drill bits and try to fabricate something out of that...again, as they are only 'locators'...the pin doesn't need to be that hard, a softer pin would actually be much easier to remove if something goes wrong again...
lesson learned...Twiggys are otherwise ready to go...looks like i dodged a pretty big bullet...