ive used the wooden ones you can buy at walmart for 90 cents 3 times and havent had a wood shaving issue... if it made you feel better about using them, you could coat them with oil prior to puttin em in to keep em from "hangin" on anything in the motor.

as for the question about left and right, when you get your timing cover off, and look down the oil galleys you will see why there is a left and right. the holes are not perfect circles. they have a flat side. i also recommend the wooden dowels as they tend to be able to bend and you can get them in and out a WHOLE lot easier. just my .02 though. as far as length goes, the dowels at walmart are 3' long, and we usually cut some off (exact length i dont recall) so i'd say anything longer than 2 1/2' would be good, but you may even need to cut some off that.

 

i ended up using some 1/4" tubing i bent out at work...for free.

i simply bent a 90 degree angle for handles on one end, then cut it about 2" longer than my cam...worked like a charm.

 

thanks for the info guys. Now I just need to figure out which cam to go with. Right now the TR224 is up there on the list.