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stories like that gives a person nightmares! what camshaft company?

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stories like that gives a person nightmares! what camshaft company?

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X 2 on what cam company

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stories like that gives a person nightmares! what camshaft company?

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Engle

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You sounds either extremely paranoid or you suspect you did something wrong on start-up. Lets hear the whole story. No valve lash change, zero issues and you still go to the trouble of pulling the lifters in the car on an assembled engine. Something just sounds fishy. I know for a fact Brad Penn and a zinc additive appear to have metal suspended and will even leave a fine black residue in the bottom of the oil pan.

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Flat tappet cams get a bad rap and get changed all too often. I have pulled engines apart that you could tell had lifters that never spun, yet there was no damage. Its called proper lubricant for the application.
One was a hydraulic, very mild with around10,000 miles, swirl pattern was noticeable everywhere except where the lobe wiped in one spot but wasn't worn. The other was a very aggressive solid that had three lifters like that after approximately100 passes.
Too many guys use the wrong oils, some add an additive that may or may not mix properly in the crankcase. Use a good oil AND proper break in and dont worry about it.
Keith

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I thought I would share a cautionary tale of woe. I decided to go flat-tappet on the 500" stroker in my Duster. It was kind of a big cam for a flat-tappet (256 @ 0.050, .575 lift), not that I'm blaming that for the failure. For the purposes of this post, let's assume I did everything right for break-in and maintenance (which I'm pretty sure I did).

I adjusted the valves at about 5 hours of operating time and decided to pull the lifters at the same time (through the drain-back openings in the heads), just to get an idea of how the cam was faring. All the lifters looked perfect, and the valve adjustment did not change at all from the first adjustment after break-in. I noticed some fine metal particles suspended in the oil when I changed it, but I didn't think much of it, since the engine was still pretty new.

Fast-forward to a few weeks ago when I decided to put in a new oil pan. Since I was down there, I decided to pull some bearing caps and see how things were wearing. What I found was a lot more wear on the bearings than I would expect on a new engine. So I pulled the intake and found the tips of three cam lobes in the early stages of failure (missing metal, pitting). But to my surprise the lifters were still PERFECT (Isky "cool face" lifters).

Long story short, the engine is now ready to go back in with a roller cam

I could speculate that those cam lobes could have kept going flat, and the valve adjustments wouldn't have varied at all, since the lifters weren't going bad. Of course, I wouldn't use valve adjustment variation alone to detect a cam issue. But this experience taught me that consistent valve lash does not mean the cam is good!

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Oh, and it's not much trouble to check lifters on an assembled engine(big-block). I've done it several times before. When the valve covers are off for a valve adjustment, just pull out each pushrod and use a magnet-on-a-stick to pull each lifter through the drain-back holes in the heads. Not much more trouble than adjusting the valves. It probably adds 1/2 hour to the job. Of course I don't do this all the time, but after the first 5 hours on a new engine, I figured it was good insurance. As it turned out, it didn't do me any good at all!

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