Trying to open up some shelving space in my shop and I have 2 new small block purple shaft hydralic lifter cams from many many years ago with lifters. Of coarse the boxes are long gone so now I need to ID them. one has the numbers 970407 (I think its a 9) and the other one only has 1138 cast into the cam body. Not worth sending these to have them profiled but do you guys know any tricks??? Pretty sure I had one of these in an engine and degreed it in with my Son Matt 10 years or so ago but we ended up not using the engine. i think that one was a 510 lift cam.

Using a dial caliper measure the lobe(s) both up and down and side to side if that makes sense. Subtract the small number from the big number. Take that number and multiply by 1.5 this is your lift.

Post a pic of the back ends of the cams, there is a way to id them.

Should be a little paint dawb? on the back ends, white, red, blue...?

I hope this helps.



Purple shaft cams by John Cadamore, on Flickr



Purple shaft cams by John Cadamore, on Flickr

Does your county have metal recycling!

LMAO. Thanks for stopping by.

This will be the Quickest easiest way to ID the cams.

The numbers on the cams are all just the core numbers.

You could also throw one in one of your many blocks and degree them to be more accurate. But the Caliper method will be True and Close enough for you to Know.

I went to do this and of coarse my batteries were dead in my calipers so its on my to do list so I can put them up for sale. To many parts and to little money. But its a race weekend so that will wait.

The funny thing is we used to try so hard to go fast and once you learn some tricks it becomes so easy. I know I could take an old-school purple shaft cam and run 10's with it now.