Love the Lucas hot rod oil. High in Zinc, and designed to cling for cars that dont get driven all the time

Mis matched parts?

With the beck lifters I use billet cores as ive been down the cast core "short life" road.

Howards cam .875 lobe,very mild.
no nitride.

Thanks Guys for the input, solid roller is next & freshen up the short block, no more flat tappet cams for me ever again. Howards is going to call me ,they want to talk to me about this problem.
Thanks again everyone !!

I'll be interested to hear their take on what's happening there.

I will post the info, they contacted me on my Facebook page.

Maybe I'm not seeing it, but I don't really see a flat cam. Seeing metal fines anywhere? Bearings and skirts - how do they look. The wear might not be right on the cam, but I would put it back in and measure it to see what you really have and make sure you identified the problem.

more cam pictures

That cam is definitely dead

Lost 1/2 a racing season after wiping out a new MP cam, broke in as usual with Comp additive. Put in an off-the-shelf Comp cam and good to go. Never waste my money again on defective MP cam.

Here's my theory.......

With an iron cam and lifters, at the microscopic level, the cam and lifter material "flow", or "give", with each other during contact.
The Schubek/tool steel style lifters are so much harder than the cam core, that only the cam is flowing during contact.
"X" amount of material flow is going to happen with a given area of contact and load. If one of the pieces is so hard that it no longer flows, then all of the displacement/flow is taken up by the remaining piece. In this case, the cam.
This additional "flexing" of the surface layer of the cam under the high loads at play work harden the cam surface, and as a result it loses it's ability to "flow"....... The surface becomes brittle........ which causes fracturing, and tiny pieces of cam break away.
This goes on continually, so it looks like it's "wearing", when in reality it's more like tiny pieces are just flaking off/breaking away.

That's my theory anyway.

I may not have it 100% correct, but I'm pretty sure that's the gist of what's going on.

If the OP had used regular edm lifters, I doubt there would have been any issue.......provided he got the cam broken in properly at the start.

I feel this is one of those situations where there was a part developed to eliminate a very specific problem in certain classes of racing engines, and it seemed like a good solution to help with a similar problem with some street applications....... And in reality...... The race car parts proved to not really be suitable for street/long term use.

That's what I meant, Solid roller............wasn't clear I guess.......

Have a cam that looks almost identical.... Schubeck lifters... There was no indication of a problem until disassembly. Had many miles, and many passes

The only lifters I will ever run are those suggested by the cam manufacturer. I am not a metallurgist. I run almost all flat tappet cams ( soild and hyd). I run a quality synthetic oil with zinc. I make sure the lifter bores and lifters are perfectly clean ( lifter bore drop test). I rotate the engine by hand with the intake off to make sure all lifters are rotating. I don't have compatibility problems and I don't have flat tappet cam failures.

Interesting thread.

When I built this current engine (540 Hemi), I was conflicted as to whether I should go with a solid flat or roller cam. It is primarily a street combo, so durability was a prime concern. I asked on here and I asked quite a few experienced Mopar engine guys about which to go with.

And just like this thread, the experiences were fairly well split between the 2. No clear cut winner.

Since I got the reciprocating assembly from Ray Barton and he has a little bit of experience in this area, I went with his recommendation which was his tool steel flat lifters.

2,000 miles with VR-1 oil and no problems.......so far. But I will keep an eye on the lobes and if I see any problems developing, I will let everybody know.

Thats just what was done to mine as Dwayne speced and had my custom grind solid flat tappet cam made and nitrided it. He also sent me the EDM lifters. I use the Valvoline 20W-50 VR1 racing oil and add a small bottle of the zinc additive at each oil change. I fired my eng in June 2011 and drive it on the street all the time and its still going strong. I had the inner springs out also when I broke the cam in. I have been very happy with my solid flat tappet but I hear your pain as I hate to see anyone wipe a cam. I can honestly say I have never run a roller cam and I have never wiped a cam lobe on any of my flat tappet cams. I hope my good luck holds out the rest of my life. Good luck with yours and sorry to see that happen to your eng. Ron

When I ordered my Howards cam They knew I was going to run tool steel lifters on the street & strip ,they said that was ok.

Your cam and lifters might not have been the issue, just a result. If you are losing oil pressure, you need to find and correct that problem first.

Yup, further investigation into low oil pressure is needed...cam/lifters may be victims.