Is Crane Cams out of business, again?

I tried to get on Crane's website, and got a warning message that their certificate was invalid and someone might be trying to steal my data.
I chose the option to go to the website anyway since I was using my low risk iPad, and got routed to the Comp website.
I read in another post that Comp Performance Group owns crane. I went on the car performance group website, and it doesn't show Crane as one of its companies. I did find that they own Edelbrock, though.

So, is Crane gone, or did one of their website people mess up?

Robert

Edelbrock, Crane and Comp, and others are all IOP now (great big ugly private equity firm).

https://www.edelblog.com/general/ed...-iop-acquires-the-comp-performance-group

Industrial Opportunity Partners (IOP), a private equity firm that invested in Edelbrock LLC back in 2010, has acquired the COMP Performance Group that includes several leading automotive brands such as COMP Cams, TCI Automotive, FAST (Fuel Air Spark Technology), Racing Head Service (RHS), ZEX Nitrous Oxide, Inglese Induction Systems, Lunati and Crane Cams.

Parts of Crane are gone and parts are owned by other folks. I used to keep in touch with Chase Knight at Crane and he explained some of it to me but it was complicated. The ignition business went to FAST and some of the cam stuff went to Comp. I think the motorcycle stuff went off on its own. A lot of stuff has just been shut down for good. One of the Crane engineers started his own hyd roller lifter company and I buy from him. He makes good lifters for a fair price.

Ugly means - the smart people are let go and tech support becomes a joke, production on a lot of it goes to China where it's been counterfeited for years anyway, quality goes in the toilet, the niche items people have relied on that maybe weren't the biggest sellers go bye-bye.

R&D? Reinvestment? Screw that. We need to be get a return on our investment. And when people stop buying our crap, we'll just sell it off.

Thats the American way. Not sure what the next generations are going to do for employment.

Who is this former Crane engineer, and what is his company name?
More importantly, who do I buy a good camshaft from now?

Robert

I have a Howard's SFT cam in my car now and I love it . If you decide on a hydraulic roller Howard's uses Gaterman lifters and they have a good rep

Gus

Bullet cams

I just tried to order a Crane Cam through Summit, it was cancelled by Crane after a month.

Thank you. I'll give it a look.

What is the name of his company?

Great but sad Info

What else do you expect, the owners run a business, and business's number one goal is to make money, everything else is just window dressing to disguise the achievement of that goal. Its mainly the naive customer base that fails to understand that. Or am I just stating the obvious?

There are always entrepreneurs that step up to fill the void. I'm constantly amazed at the young guys stepping up and making cool parts for the aftermarket. Motion Raceworks is but one example. The small guy suppliers for late model stuff with poweradders is crazy!

I was a big fan of Crane's Street-Race Distributors. The ones that had external dials for total advance and advance curve. They were awesome. I know some company bought the rights to them, but they don't make them with the adjustable dials. It's really too bad.

If people stop buying your crap, you don't have anything to sell off. To make it sound like all PE is bad, is insane. Of course anyone investing in a business is going to look to streamline things, but if they want to flip the bigger entity, they need to show new revenue paths, not just optimize old ones.

Hey look everyone. It's jcc simply 'stating the obvious' that you naive customers fail to understand.

I just can't understand why he isn't more popular than he is. Anyone have any idea why he isn't more popular? Anyone?

"What else do you expect, the owners run a business, and business's number one goal is to make money, everything else is just window dressing to disguise the achievement of that goal."

I can tell you've never run a private company. Yes, the number one goal IS to make money... to pay for employees, their benefits and health care and contributions. Oh, and to reinvest into the company, new product research, new or updated equipment, heck even something as simple as new computers for the office.

As for 'window dressing' - that's called 'products and services.' It may be 'window dressing' to you, but for those who own and run a business, that window dressing is what makes or breaks a company - the difference, in most cases, between viable and 'well, we gave it a shot.'

I think you should apologize to the many people on this board who have businesses and put countless hours, time, effort and money into them to make them not only viable, but better.

smh......

There's a huge difference between being passionate and good at something and starting and growing a business to be able to do that successfully at the highest levels, develop and manufacture the best and make a living at it...and buying a successful business with the only goal being to make a return on the investment and make maximum profit, and doing whatever it takes to achieve that - outsourcing, cutting quality and skilled employees, pretending to have the same passion as the guy who built it.

Do you think Rick Moroso, JC Beattie, Ricky Jones, Jerry Bickel, Dave Smith and many others I could name, go to work everyday with the same mindset as the pencil pushers, analysts, paper shufflers and bean counters at IOP?

So S&S is out of the picture?

I was at Callies back in July. They gave me the nickel tour and I was noticing huge piles of cams and cam cores in addition to all the crankshafts. I was completely unaware they made cams and cam cores. My tour guide informed me that they had bought some of the cam equipment from Crane. I asked them what made them to decide to get in the cam business. The answer was "nobody else was doing it". He said they were doing well with it, suppling cores to all the big hitters. Crane had for years. So at least that has not gone away. Todd

A google search comes up with different things. Either way it's been changing owners and who knows what else. They where the go to place for cams back in the day but Comp is it today.
https://cyclesource.com/crane-cams-acquired-by-mikronite-technologies/
https://community.hagerty.com/t5/hagerty-lounge/crane-cams/m-p/76973

Not sure I'd agree with the Comp comment. They are now part of an investment group and I know of several issues in the last couple of years with cams failing despite proper break in. Myself I've had 3 of their purportedly indestructible fuel pump pushrods fail in different motors within 50 miles or less. 2 were big block mopars the 3rd was a Sb chevy.
The first time I called them and they said, if you send it in (on my dime) we'll analyze it. If we determine it was our fault we'll send you another, I responded with, NO _______ THANK YOU.

It's sad as they were the go to company and previously I would have agreed 100%

Comp has sucked for the last 10 years. 50% of what I buy goes back, mis matched pushrod lengths, parts returned and sent back to stock, resold with flaws... just overall poor QC.

My local machinist switched to Howards cams about the same timeframe for the same reasons and losing too many flat tappet cams during dyno break in. He said their responses were about the same as I received.

do EV's even need a cam???

yes, they're called batteries LOL

No. But they need an outlet.

I stopped at a gas station two days ago, out here in the sticks, and there was a fancy new Tesla sitting in the lot, dead as a stone. Guy was waiting for help I guess. I was going to ask him if he needed to borrow a few bucks for gas.

"I know it's electric. I just though you might like to pour it over the car and set it on fire"


But I didn't. Just chuckled to myself and drove off in my antique tech beater that I could drive across country without worrying about finding someplace to recharge it in the middle of the night. Then being stuck there while it charges and hoping I don't get mugged.

where the heck r u stopping to recharge???? chicago?? detroit ??, newark???

Glad to see they picked up the ball and ran with it. Not an easy thing to do nowadays.
When I last had a custom ground cam done, i was told by Engje that Crane was the major supplier and that cores were in short supply