At a 25% failure rate, shouldn't the cam grinder take stronger action than to only 'offer' additional services? Something like a strong declaration as to the failure rate without the additional services. Or better yet, make those additional steps inclusive. It would seem to me that the only reason to NOT include those additional and more costly services would because the additional costs would lead to a decline in sales.
In other words, the cam grinder has a responsibility to educate and inform their customers on the issues. Not everyone is up on cam core technology and manufacture.
Except when they are more interested in profits and competing with lower priced offerings. It is sad as Comp used to be the go to and not worry.
I wonder what Blueprint engines is doing or who they might be using, unless they are making them in house.
ironically enough I had a call from a younger guy two days ago with a freshly built flat tappet motor. He's fully trained on the newer cars etc. Helped his cousin build a 351up using all kinds of hi-po parts. He wanted to bring it in for tuning as it was backfiring through the carb and not running right. As usual I ask a series of questions to get a feel for what I might be getting into.
He had no clue about zinc additives, the 20 minute 2-3k RPM run in, single spring break in on performance cams, or anything else related to flat tappet cams.
He said it started fine and after about 5 or 10 minutes started missing a bit and with further run time started backfiring through the carb.
I told him I strongly suspected he may have lost a lobe or two and educated him a bit on flat tappet cams. He said he had gone to school and been working at a dealership for about 5 years but did not recall anything being taught in school on flat tappet cams.
I asked if he had checked for coil bind? what's that he replied?
I told him to pull the valve covers and start inspecting the valvetrain for broken springs, rocker arms, pushrods or lack of movement/lift.
So, maybe some of the failures ARE in fact due to the end user as flat tappets are becoming somewhat like what took place with wheel bearings.
Ball bearings were common place and cheap but required maintenance. Timken's were far superior but expensive to produce. In the mid to late 60's or so, the use of Timken's became more commonplace and as manufacturing technology advanced the price on them dropped and the ball bearings became much more expensive. Along with the changeover to Timken's came different installation and set up procedures
Sorry for the rambling, I'm getting old LOL
