The first prototype is bolted back onto the bike. I hope to have a video in the next day or two. Basically any riding on it is gated on receiving a new cam follower from McMaster Carr. They're generally amazingly fast at shipping, so there is hope this isn't overly optimistic!
The backup cam (not to be confused with a cam follower) is on there. Since it has a different profile than the original cam, it will feel different. I can still hopefully give folks an idea of how it works with a video.
I've also made some progress strapping a couple of GoPro cameras to the bike so that there will be mostly synchronized video facing forwards and looking at the mechanism (though from an angle). I don't know how informative it will be as the following video generated from the CAD model demonstrates what one could do with a cam better than you'll see in real-life since I exaggerated the dimensions greatly. In the real-life mechanism the movements along the rail are on the order of one or two millimeters.
I've taken a few pictures to help whet people's appetites for the videos for now.
I took the liberty of attaching both a 700c and a 20" (406) wheel. Since I didn't have two 700c wheels which I could attach, I just did them at the same time. I could totally ride the bike this way if I wished, but it'd look weird!.
In any case, I took a picture of it from each side to try to help people visualize what it might look like with each.
The following imgur album has the pics:
http://imgur.com/a/0dsCY
Pics 7 and 8 show how some of the parts were failing.
The part mating to the heim joint (pic 7) is twisting. Wrong material choice-- should have used steel or supported it from both sides.
In 8 you can see how the cam roller died-- the bottom disintegrated and the roller also cracked. This is probably because the stud onto which the cam roller is mounted bent, because it dented the original aluminium cam and these things together created stress risers..
.. ahhh prototypes...