Jeep Strokers

Plash , Glad your foaming.
The back plate must be kept, there is an oil drain back in the front of the block among other things.
After discussing with SixPak I will be useing the old style cam (as that is the only performance blank being ground). But the design will include a thrust bearing.

This does look very promising.

Looks nice Tom. I had entertained this idea a few months ago and started doing some research but when I put it into prospective for my build, the cost to gain for my application would not have been worth it. I'm glad to see someone is working on this for those who really need it.
Just curious, why do you want to run the belt dry and take up space with the seal when you could run it wet and not even need the backing plate and extra seals? Comp Cam's wet belt uses a Gates belt (I have to check again to see if it is a PowerGrip or a Polychain). You can buy unfinished sprockets right from gates and machine the internals to fit the cam yourself and maybe even work in a cam timing adjustment to it. If you want to make custom diameters the tools are avaliable to make the slots.
Jesel has a new belt out called the White Rhino that they are claiming is stronger than the other belts they are running on their other setups. That could be a good candidate for a belt on your dry setup because of the lost space due to the backing plate and seal.
I have the design guides for the Poly Chain and the Power Grip belts in PDF form if you would like them.

~Alex