Hi all - I have a few cam bearing tools, but they all seem to have to expand alot to fit a sbc cam bearing- and i regularly get one go in a little crooked and cam is tight. Im so over it - spent 3 hours yesterday fighting with yet another cam bearing situation.. fitting / checking / so im wondering if I can turn a dedicated sbc driver on the lathe and coat it in some polymer coating, or make a copy of what I have with a closer fit - when the 4 quarters are tight the gaps are almost 1/4 inch causing the bearing to deform in my opinion.. thoughts? and yes i am not pound the snot out of it- i rebuild stock motors at my shop but some days the cam bearings take longer than the bottom end!
I'm sure you can make one, BUT small block chevy is as common it gets, have you checked out what's in the market from better companies, either to buy or replicate a better design. Goodson is one to check out, specializes in engine building tools.
sounds good, perhaps a med-hard shoreness nylon with a steel backing might also be an option - ill check goodson too, good recommendation.. I have seen the old schools style with 3 oring grooves, might make a dedicated one like that- ill hunt down some round stock and play around..
I bought a dedicated SBC cam bearing tool off eBay and it has worked perfectly. It doesn't use just one size "donut", it came with three in total I believe. Depending on which bearing is being installed, the shaft the "ramming donut" slides on is always fully supported and therefore aligned. With this method, I don't see how a person could "cock" a bearing If you are having issues with what you presently have, and if you intend to build more SBC's, I'd suggest grabbing a dedicated tool. If I remember correctly, basing this off a quote from a local machine shop, my tool was paid for after two uses.
It's like any other tool (much like wood working). It's all in how you hold it. I build my own from scraps without a pilot as shown in reply #4 and I get them in square every time.
My mom once said, "It's a poor man who blames his tools", but then again it could be why she was married eight times....true story.
well i think part of the issue is the std bearings ive been using. I pulled a set of decent old school ones this morning and they went in in 5 minutes with excellent rotation.. i might need to change my bearing choices- I did see those tools, i might just order that one and see how it goes. Dont know why they didnt at least make the sbc ones to fit close requiring minimal expansion.. either way
Is that tool, the bearing's or the block it's self? Chevy had/used odd size bearing at the plant when a bore was machined out of spec.
I made one on the lathe without any o ring grooves or alignment parts. I haven't had any problem with it. I make sure that everything is straight, oiled and don't slam hard on it.
I have both an old store made installer and several that I made on my lathe for the SBC and other engines. I have found that on the SBC the important step in getting the bearing squared up before installing is getting the correct fit in the support bore that aligns the tool. The SBC has three different cam bearing bore IDs, so I made a set of three pucks that align the installation tool. I like a snug fit on the bearing installation puck. On the store made tool on some bearings I would have to use some thin strips of masking tape to get a fit so that the bearing didn't fall off the puck.
The few I have done I always take a knife and do a very slight chamfer on the ID of the bearing. A lot of them are sharp on the ID from when they are cut during manufacturing. I do it a lot with transmission bushings too.
I made mine from an old camshaft I had. I cut off the nose of the shaft where the gear bolts on, then made a 1/4" thick plate to fit it. It just has to be big enough to cover the outer diameter of the bearing. Then took a piece of nylon and turned it to fit the first bearing hole to locate the drive dowel. Drive the bearings from back to front. The dowel was just a piece of mild steel rod I had from an old barbell set. Also made a short dowel just for driving the front most bearing. Worked out great! Edit: I actually made the plate that bolts on to the old cam nose just a slight bit smaller than the last cam bore in the block so I could use it as a bearing remover as well
When I was racing and fooling with a lot of engines, I bought a Snap-On cam bearing installer. I've never had a problem with it installing a bearing crooked.
I honestly have no idea what you mean by "minimal expansion". What expands? Also, your earlier sentence almost sounds like you are removing cam bearings from one block and reusing them ???? I have never heard of anyone reusing cam bearings. Quote: "well i think part of the issue is the std bearings ive been using. I pulled a set of decent old school ones this morning and they went in in 5 minutes with excellent rotation.. i might need to change my bearing choices".
I’m with Jaracer , I’ve got a Lisle brand kit,,,,,,,I’ve never had an issue once with it . It cost about a 160 bucks many years ago,,,,,,,I’ve paid for it several times already by installing my own bearings . They used to only charge about 15 bucks here to install them ,,,,,glad I bought my own . Tommy
I've got a couple of home made ones. One you pound on and the other you pull the bearing in. Both work without any problems. Make your own and you win twice.
I also made a homemade one. Cut the dist end off of a bad cam,drilled 1\2" hole in end , ground down damper washer to fit cam brg OD. Cut piece of wood from 2x4 with hole saw to center 1\2 threaded rod in cam bearing bore. Practice with old bearings if first time. I worked in a shop for 10+ years so I had a feel for this.Buy one piece bearings, not the split ones. Pete.
I agree with making your own custom one..........and then make a couple of aligning pucks to hold the handle straight when installing. I would check the bearings before installation and lightly radius the front edge of each bearing before installation. Also deburr the blocks cam bearing hole.
to clarify i am not using old bearings! i pulled a set of oldschool NOS bearings from my stock shelf.. and by crooked i meant the bushing that expands, its near half its size when tightening up against the cam bearing creating 4 tight corners.. Either way all good - ill maybe look at the ebay tool - was just curious what u guys have made/used .. i do build on average 1 - 2 chevies a month and time to time encounter cam bearing issues..
Here is what I bought. I looked at several cheaper ones, and decided that this was worth the cost over some similar looking but cheaper ones. It wasn't that expensive, but can't remember what I paid for it. You do need to do a little searching as prices vary. There was a specific reason why I picked this one, but like the price I can't remember what it was that caused me to choose the Lisle. https://www.tooldiscounter.com/prod...ZFDeccR3zEqHoOVHYRa6itEKQl74kBl4aAiwPEALw_wcB
Good to hear When you said "I pulled a decent set of old school ones" I thought for sure you meant you pulled them from a block, not from the shelf Looking at some of the pics in this thread, I now understand the "expanding tool" part too. The tool I bought from eBay came with solid pucks and the tool was specifically for the SBC. I have no experience with the expanding type and can honestly say, if I had seen them as an option (over the solid puck style), I still wouldn't have purchased them. A performance machine shop in my area wanted $60 to tap in some SBC cam bearings. The tool I bought was somewhere around $120 Canadian, including shipping so my third install was free
When I started building SBC ,I just made my own, cam bearing tool,,and it has worked fine for 50+ years. \Two months ago,I got around to making my self a extra tip for it,too fit Ford Y-block///there very close in size to each other,so much so,that you can nock out Ford-Y cam bearings with a SBC tool,but the SBC is a tiny bit too small for puting in Ford -Y cam bearing=It would mess up. So had to make a prefect fit tool tip. Too some,it is shocking,that the later designed SBC,is oddly very close to the older Ford- Y ,in so many many ways.
I bought a used Snap On one on eBay a number of years ago, for cheap. My Snap on guy saw it, and said that the new ones were way better, and swapped it for a new one. In short, even an off-brand tool that is correct to the application is WAY better than any sort of universal one, and well worth the small investment.
If you have access to a lathe, have the round stock to turn them out of and the time to do it there isn't a reason in the world to not make your own dedicated set. When I was in High school auto shop between 1962 and 1965 there was a cam bearing driver set in the tool room with a number of different size drivers that were machined to fit various engines. They threaded into One thing that I remember is that even as a bunch of high school sophomore beginner students we didn't ruin cam bearings. Word was that a former student in the class had turned all of them on a lathe in the shop. That included the shaft and the cone to line them up. It worked a lot better than the expandable driver that was in the shop when I started teaching in 1978 that seemed to eat a cam bearing for every other set you installed with it. Go for it and then show us what you made and forget what the bullshit artists say.
awesome chaps - pretty much confirmed my suspicions regarding the expansion style ones.. I have bough good US made and cheap types- Ill see if i can source some round stock - If i had 2-1/8 stock laying around id do it but i dont - so might check the ebay option.. but ill hold off and update if i turn something myself - This is the speedway version - low price the stock alone would cost me that much. Wondering if the driver is alu or steel... what pug/drivers have you guys used on homemade ones - steel? Wonder if some 2-1/2" heat shrink will work on the drive face to protect the bearings more? nothing worse than trying to smooth out a nick inside a block with my ape hands...
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