Technical SBC eats cams

Maybe I'm lucky or don't know any better, I've installed and broken in maybe 40 or more FT cams, never lost one. Most were done 30 years ago, a lot in stock cars on a Friday night, raced the next night. Most oil at the time was high ZDDP, I used nothing but Kendall racing oil. Cams were broken in with 20W50.

The last one I did in early 2016, pre-oiled the crap out of it, had a gauge at the back of the block, made sure all the rockers had oil. My engine builder recommended VR1 10W30, it has to flow immediately. The oil is the only variable I've made over the years, plus an additive recommended on the cam instructions. I use what I can find locally. I go conservative on the initial lash, do the final adjustment after break in and the oil/filter change.

My guess is the cam blanks and or lifters are to blame for the rash of recent-year failures.

I was talking to my builder, he had a customer break in a new race engine, they even had it on the shop dyno and everything was jake. It gets installed, broken in and he goes drag racing. On the 2nd pass, it blows. He used Royal Purple oil after the break in. After some back and forth, they get Royal Purple on the phone. RP asks, did you shake up the oil first? No... It turns out that the good stuff in RP settles to the bottom of the container and gets thrown out with the empties. Of course nothing on a RP container has this tidbit on it.

 

Number one, Never trust a machine shop to get the oil passages clean!! I've had more than one engine block come back from the machine shop with sludge in the oil galleries. Always use brushes and maybe a rifle cleaning rod to be sure everything is clean. Don't trust the machine shop to do it.

 

I think a good probability is they have better suppliers for cams/lifters. They've likely concentrated efforts on engineering the requirements for the cams/lifters they use, and have required suppliers to meet those requirements. It could be hardness levels, it might be average surface roughness, it might be both of those and maybe others. These are probably things that raise the cost of the cams, but volume purchasing gives the ability to negotiate the price back down. Individual cam buyers, even engine shops don't have that kind of purchasing power, and so they don't get the extra care. Just a guess, but I bet I'm not far off.

 

You are probably right .
But,,,I wonder about the people that produce these cams .
If they are outsourced,,,,,which I’m sure they are,,,,,,somewhere,,,,,,regular joes are running the casting process for the cores .
Regular joes are running the grinders that produce the cam lobes and even do the heat treat operations .
Somewhere the operation must be breaking down,,,,and the quality of the cams is insufficient.

I still wonder if most of this goes back to the operation of producing the lifters ?

if the lifters are made off shore,,,,and I would bet that is the case now,,,,at least for a great deal of lifters ?
What if some bean counter in you know where ,,,decided to skip the operation of putting a crown on the lifter base ?
Without a crowned surface,,,,these lifters will not rotate,,,,or at least very well .
And,,,it would accelerate the wear ,,,,,even wear them out in a few minutes sometimes.

Or,,,,if they are made somewhere remotely close to here .
What if the machine that produces the crown surface was broken down,,,or improperly adjusted?
That would produce an unacceptable surface,,,,,and would create these sort of problems .
Managers,,,or bosses might be under the gun to show production quantities,,,,and might be willing to look the other way,,,just to make numbers .

Stranger things have happened,,,,,and if you only check one every hour,,,,that would be a lot of parts produced out of spec .
I have seen parts produced for an entire shift and not be checked,,,oh yeah !
When you are desperate to produce,,,,,and the workers you have are not quite what they should be ,,,,sometimes they roll the dice and take a chance .
You might say,,,,,,just fire the bums,,,,,LoL,,,,that’s a good one .
Because if you have to hire ,,,,,and you have a list of who you can hire .
Like I said that’s a good one !!!

I don’t know who supplies the OEMs,,,,,I hope it’s someone good.

Maybe the aftermarket cam companies should purchase from them as well .

Tommy

 

There is a way to check and see if a new set of lifters have crowns on the bottom.... Hold the lifter upside down in a V-block and run an indicator across the bottom.... How much of a crown are lifters supposed to have????.... Is it something like .004"-.005"....????

 

Or just hold it up to the light with a straightedge ....

 

I don't think the factory way is necessarily the "better way". It's easier for the factory to do, and can be done without any intake, carb, wiring, coolant, etc. But the issue is there's no compression because they spin them without spark plugs. So the rings wont seat as well as an engine that's got plugs in it, and is broken in by varying the rpm's.
I've never lost a flat tappet cam, whether the cam was new, or the whole engine was new when I assembled them. But I run the proper oil, with zinc in it, but no extra zinc added to it. I just got about 3300 miles on my SBC, and the first roller camshaft/lifter engine for me. Only reason it's a roller cam is the short block was already a later roller block, and had lifters and cam. So I just swapped the cam to something bigger, and slapped a nice pair of LT1 heads on it.

 

Media from one lobe or 5, its all bad and hung up in the bearings...

 

I have never lost a cam lobe in an engine unless it had high mileage and just wore out. I don't think machine shops make good engine builders and a lot of engine builders are not necessarily GOOD engine builders. JMO but I believe a lot of camshaft failures are because of trash in a new engine.

 

Years back, a local truck mechanic built up a nice SBC, almost immediately lost a cam lobe.
Strip and rebuild carefully with a new cam and lifter kit - lasted about 30 minutes.
Repeat step 2 with another new cam and kit, everything double checked. also lasted about 30 minutes.
Now grasping at straws for an answer, an oil sample from the engine along with cam and lifters was sent to the oil company for inspection and testing.
Oil company rep arrived back about a week later with a verbal " I will only tell you only once, then deny it happened"
report admitting the problem was oil failure, and suggested a product from a different manufacturer to use.
Next engine build was successful, ran the rest of the season in a club level sprint car.
Strange but true, it really happened.

 

Oil failure.. a new one on me, but why not? Any word on whose oil it was? I know engine builders are superstitious about what oil they use and recommend to others.

 

The side of a lifter make a pretty good straight edge to check for wear on the face of the lifter. Wipe off any excess oil, hold one lifter by the ends so you can view across the side of it, hold up to a good light source and place another lifter, face down, across across the side of the first lifter. You should be able to see contact only in the middle of the lifter face if it's still slightly convex. If you see light thru the center of the lifter face then it is slightly concave and showing at least some wear.

 

We have had this conversation a lot over the past week, and at one point this weekend, myself, Tommy, and 2 other buddies sat around talking about assembly and cam break in. Mostly due to my question about "does zinc additive turn to sludge". Now keep in mind that I'm just a hack in most circles, but i have always built my own engines, and the majority have been the small block Chevy. I was taught at an early age to use white lithium on the bearings, after cleaning them with brake clean and a scotchbrite pad, cam lube on the camshaft and lifters, and transmission fluid in the ring lands. I have always done it this way, and never had any type of failure. Hell i couldn't tell you how many I've put together and never did a "proper cam break in", just hit the street for a few miles and changed the oil. But, sitting around this weekend, talking shit, we were all having the same thoughts on this subject. One of my friends has spent his life in the racing field. I won't stick his name on the internet, but he's known as doctor speed. He was a nitro funny car crew chief, ran his own nitro dragster, one twin engine dragster, and if you have ever heard of Harley Davidson, he was the Screaming Eagle division. If you watch the video of Byron Hines induction to the NHRA hall of fame, he thanks God and Dick just saying he knows what he's doing. And he sat right there at 85 years of age and told us that he never used anything but 10w30 oil, a can of STP, and atf to assemble his stuff. Do you ever think that maybe we're overthinking stuff?

 

Re "oil failure", what does that even mean? The term has so many possibilities. The most likely scenario is that the mechanic was using a bulk oil, not bottles, and the distributor that fills his tank accidently pumped the wrong oil into it. It happens. The driver just wasn't paying attention, had a bad day, etc, grabbed the wrong hose reel and filled the tank with the wrong oil. Or, he didn't flush his lines good enough, and that tank got the remainder of whatever he was pumping through the line prior to it. Being in the business this happens way too often. It's possible he was using packaged oil, and the bottles going down the line got the wrong oil pumped into them, but that would be extremely rare, there are far too many QC processes put in place for that. It could happen, anything can happen, but that would not be very likely. But here is where the story goes wonky IMO, there are QC procedures everyone is supposed to follow, and one of those is the driver will take a "retain sample" for every delivery he makes, and the distributor holds onto those samples, so if/when something like this happens, the quality of the oil as delivered can be verified. The same would be true of the packaging line at the plant. IF something is wrong with the oil, the chain of handling and the quality of the oil at each step can be verified. And if there is a problem with the oil and it causes a failure the oil company will (should) reimburse the customer for the cost of repairs. If the story told were true, if the oil was tested and the results showed there was something wrong with the oil, then the mechanic would have the evidence he needs right there to demand reimbursement. The business about "I will only tell you once and then deny it", I'm not buying that. There are a lot of shady business men out there, but the oil analysis report would be all the mechanic needed to get satisfaction.

 

This has been an interesting thread..to say the least. Lots of ideas on what went wrong...twice.
Tomorrow morning I'm stuffing the new SBC into the 55. Why am I still leery about firing it up?
I'm heading to the auto parts store this morning to choose my start up oil and post break in oil. Wish me luck...and any thoughts on what you run for your flat tappets...

 

Praying that third time is a charm and anxious to hear how it turns out. I have a new cam I need to break in soon as well and have never had an issue in the past...but have some angst about it anymore. Not so sure that ignorance wasn't better for me. Although, my ignorance would have had me using regular oil as I have always used back when I built lots of motors 20 years ago...

 

I used Valvoline VR1 10W-30 on my last one, plus a cam break in additive recommended by the cam maker. From there just follow what the cam maker suggests, make sure the engine can run for the duration. If possible, pre-oil the crap out of it. I always dump the oil and filter right after.

 

I bought a new set of hydraulic lifters from O'Reilly for the 430 Lincoln engine in my 37 ford coupe. The box said melling lifters. Made in USA. I called melling and talked to their tech man on the phone. He said that the surface of the automotive hydraulic lifters is 58 on the Rockwell hardness scale. I am using the stock Lincoln cam reground by Oregon Cam grinding. I used Lucas's break in oil. It started right up and was run 20 minutes just like the melling tech advised. So far so good, no lifter noise. But I did tear the engine completely down and used oil gallery brushes to get the oil passages clean. And even said a prayer to the cam God. LoL

 

Well...here we go. I'll use Castrol GTX 10W30 with Lucas Zinc additive for a 30 minute 2000-2500 rpm break in. I also picked up a magnetic drain plug...just because.
I'm still not sure what to replace it with for the following 500 miles of driving break in... and then what after that. The Lucas additive says add a full bottle ar every oil change. Is it true, or are they just marketing their product ? Maybe we can get the Facebook fact checkers on it.

I'll admit it. This cam BULL5h1T has me spooked. I still find it impossible to believe they can't figure out a better solution during manufacture instead of leaving it all up to a 30 minute break in..

 

Good luck with your startup. You realize that you're gonna start a whole new bruhaha by showing that Fram filter? Right?

 

Lol... well I already own it, and it’s gotta last 30 minutes.

 

First thing I noticed.

 

Ok...I just watched a few FRAM oil filter videos. ..so the FRAM will get nixed. Live and learn. How did we ever survive without the internet so solve our issues?

 

And then again , some of us have used fram filters for years without incident !
AGEL55. The ast 3 FT cams I've been involved with ,Lucas break-oil was used for start up & first 500 miles , Lucas Hotrod/ muscle car oil since , no issues..

 

Every time I see these oil/filter/lifter stories, guys gotta say, "been doing it this way for 30 years! Well consider this: things CHANGE! Fram used to make a quality filter, oh maybe 20 years ago. All the oil companies USED to put a lotta zinc in oil, A LONG TIME AGO. Lifters used to all generally be good enough to survive 100,000 miles back in the day. Well guess what, bean counters driven by profit margin, and the EPA, driven by the anti-christ (or something), made a lot of things we took for granted, different today. That's why we read this stuff today-to keep informed about what is going on TODAY! Thank you for your time, rant over. PS, if anyone has a set of good, unused, prehistoric, NOS anti pump up Chevy lifters, I'm looking for 'em.

 

Ok, I cut the Fram open out of curiosity. Fyi, it had no bypass valve at all. Hmmm.

I also have a Bosch on the shelf. Any holt crap concerns there?

 

Hey Lloyd, just curious when the last flat tappet cam engine he built was? I’d assume the racing engines he was involved with were roller cams?
Ie the last flat tappet engine I put together was in the late 90’s, but I don’t think I started hearing about the “issues” a good 10 years or so later.

The other thing, did you happen to ask him (assuming he’s been putting flat tappet engines together the past 20 or so years) is who’s parts does he use? They (parts) might be of better quality than we get off the Summit and Jegs, shelves.
Not “tossing shade” as the kids say, just trying to get some context to compare to.

 

Nice. y-block…shaft rockers too. No oil on rod bearing when installing.