The text below came from the following link:
http://www.hughesengines.com/general/tech_articles/masters_of_disasters.aspI'm guessing there are going to be "a few" people taking exceptions to Mr. Hughes' commentary.
"THE ENGINE MASTERS DISASTERS!
As they say "no good deed goes unpunished", and the Engine Masters Challenge (sponsored by Popular Hot Rodding Magazine) was certainly a good example of that for our shop!
We were asked to supply camshafts for an engine build-up for this contest by an internet chat room. The chance of good publicity for our shop from a situation like is a long shot at best and bad publicity is almost assured. Other "contests" in which we have supplied parts or help have ALWAYS ended up in a black eye for us. And the Engine Masters just continued the unpleasantness. It is like hitting yourself with a hammer, it feels so good when you stop.
The problem stems from the fact that these testers are not professionals. These amateur, although well-intentioned individuals are always challenged, financially, time wise, equipment wise, and experience wise. In other words their "wise" is always a negative. Not only that, but this in not the way they make their living and therefore the have no incentive to see the project thru when the going gets tough and problems arise. And they will and they can and will be frustrating and-the big one here, EXPENSIVE. Yea baby, money and you can't budget enough for it. Been there, done that, and we'll do it again, the road to success is paved with failure, broken parts and empty check books.
When reality bites and it does, they try to cut corners and do it on the cheap. Like duh, if it was cheap everyone could and would do it. We calculated that for our shop to seriously compete in the first Challenge could cost upwards of $25,000.00 in lost time in the shop, machine work, parts, dyno and testing time and travel expenses. Many entrants do not figure their own time and think the cost is much less than it really is.
The ideal situation would be for someone from another magazine to enter. This way the parts manufacturers machine shops and dyno facilities would be climbing all over themselves to offer their services for the exposure, it would be a win-win situation for almost everyone, except of course the people it was originally intended to showcase. That way they could do it very inexpensively with the latest parts and facilities, and since it would all be in the So.-Cal area, travel and lost time from work would be nil. You would be paid to compete! Ah, I digress, I'm trying to change the subject to something more pleasant. We gave them a "deal" on the cams. We did this with much trepidation and saw it as a "damned if we do and damned if we don't" situation.
Now, to the crux of the problem. The block that was used was a very poor choice and the problem was not caught until about 2 weeks before the qualifying dyno pulls in late summer. The sharp guys were testing combinations in the spring.
The block was either one of Chrysler's "salvaged" blocks or it had a trauma in it's earlier life. In the days when this block was new the factory would salvage(save) blocks, that were improperly machined, with non-standard parts. One of those parts that were used was over-sized lifters when the bores were as little as 0.001" out-of-spec. Now it is important that you keep this dimension in mind as you read along. I believe at that time both 0.0015" and 0.003" over-sized lifters were used when necessary to salvage new blocks. The factory considered a lifter bore between 0.0005" and 0.001" to loose for their extremely mild 2 bbl cams. How 'bout that! The subject block had, from what we were told, lifter bores that were "maybe between 0.004" and 0.008" over-sized."
We list in our web-catalog and in our printed catalog a lifter bore broaching tool precisely to eliminate this and other lifter bore problems. One of these tools was used and the tool "fell thru the bad bores" Like duh, dude! Maybe something is wrong. The broaching tool should have to be pressed or driven thru the bores, anything else is unacceptable, even for a stock engine. No cam could live in this situation and guess who's cam is going to go in the block, I think I hear the fat lady warming up! It doesn't take a rocket surgeon to figure what was going to happen, and it did and very quickly too, I might add. The obvious question at this point is why wasn't the problem corrected when it was discovered? Again we are talking about students who are learning and some students can only learn the hard way. Maybe it is a money problem, whatever it is a mark of an amateur. The fat lady's getting' louder. "Maybe it was a mistake" (bet your sweet bippy on that, Einstein) "Let's try another cam." Oh, yeah, Hughes will like this idea. "Let's check and see if we can cover up one mistake with another mistake, it's worth a shot." If it doesn't work blame the cam, everyone else does. The fat lady is so loud now we can hear her all the way from the Black Hills, she is almost drowning out the sound of the lifters cocking in their bores and digging the sides out of the cam lobes. Excuse me for a moment I feel a little queasy. Guess what? The phone is ringing; I wonder who it could be, duh?
"Hey, 2 of your cams went flat and we have to qualify next week." When something goes wrong it always belongs to the merchant (the business owners reading this just smiled and nodded) if it's fast the owner did it by himself! You have to realize that in this business we deal with car guys who have very big egos and don't like to be told that they made a mistake. Dragging the truth out of a customer who is learning his craft can be next to impossible. First it is perceived as an affront to his manhood and second to correct the problem will require more work and usually it is expensive.
Now, the merchant is brought into problem, time is short, money is short, and egos are up front, and the dialog will be anything but conducive to solving the problem. Most of the students know enough about the business to carefully craft their answers so that it appears that they are an innocent victim of "bad parts". The time-lines, and truth take a bath if the student thinks he can or should be held blameless and compensated. We even have callers who have no intention of buying anything but threaten to black-ball us or drag our name thru the mud if we don't GIVE them the parts they want. This black-mail threat is quite common and evident when you see all the web postings with cute names, they probably didn't free parts.
Merchants brought into the problem after the fact are in a lose-lose situation. If they help the student they are in effect accepting the blame and if they don't yield they can expect to see their name in an unflattering way on the internet. When the merchant tries to determine exactly what went wrong and why, so the problem will not be repeated, the student can be in such a stew that he cannot be dealt with in a rationally. This scenario is not always the same and some students are treated much better than others, it all depends on how the student approaches the merchant.
In the case of the Challenge engine the final results were bittersweet. The originally existing problem was repaired by sleeving the lifter bores and the engine did make the qualifying dyno pulls. It didn't make the finals, but from what we're told if another problem (not lifter bores, Praise the Lord) had not reared it ugly head this might have been one of the top 4 or 5 engines in the contest. The students did not allow themselves enough time, another amateur mistake, but they were on the right path.
Some of the unwarranted fallout from this deal is that cams that we have been successfully used by our customers for 10 over years got a bad rap thru no fault of their own. This is why the smart merchants don't give amateurs parts to test, see we all learned something from are of this pain, will the fat lady please sit down!"
