The text below came from the following link:

http://www.hughesengines.com/general/tech_articles/masters_of_disasters.asp

I'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!"

....opens Dr.Pepper & sits back in easy chair to watch this one.....

One of his roller cams *was* intended for the 349....

This should be interesting

Hmmmm.......

Oouch!!!!!! That wasn't very nice.

Well it looks like the folks that participated did well for "Amateurs"!! Hughes is a business and they have to CYA too.
No blame anywhere but did they have to post it on their site? Did I miss a bash Hughes thread here somewhere?
I planned on using their cam in my stroker so............

The guys worked very hard on this motor, he fails to mention that there are some very knowlagable people on this board, DRAM, Hakim, and yea some hobbyists, so friggin what, all this guy did was piss off 6000 potential customers from this board, and maybe some of their friends, maybe things diddnt turn out the way we planned, but to call these guys all amatures from a chat room is wayyyy out of line, he even fessed that it could have been in the top 4 or 5, well it wasnt, but it certainly was not due to lack of effort, so now because the engine diddnt place, he becomes the sore looser, and tries to disassociate with the chat room amatures, well heres a big F-off to Hughes from me, cause if that trophy was here, they would be spouting about it to all the rags, too bad this article had to come out, there already is enough pain being felt, and I think we should be already making plans for the next attempt, learning curve is one thing , a curve ball is another. Oh and BTW im in on the next one. That guy struck a nerve!! Sorry this had to come out.

That wasn't very nice

Interesting read.

All I'll say about it, is that my shop has probably bought at least 5 sets of Hughes valve springs and other assorted valvetrain parts from Hughes Engines in the past 2 months, and I HAD recommended their cams to alot of guys running "street" motors that we do cylinder head work for. I usually recommend Comp Cams for the race engines.

I guess my new Hughes catalog will be hitting the trash bin where it belongs and Dwayne (Comp Cams) and Scott Brown can expect to be getting all of my valve spring and camshaft business in the future for customers engines.

Oh oh *ducks*. Here's a take from a guy that runs Hughes cams and likes 'em.

Dave is too dadgum sensitive. I read the Enginemasters thread over several times and never got the idea that when it was all said and done - the team believed that it was his cams fault. Nor did I get the idea that the situation deteriorated into finger pointing at his cams. I know there was concern expressed...more than once but shoot...not to the extent that warranted that bunch of grade school stuff from Dave.

WTF is he hollering about and calling the EM guys amateurs? Our "amateurs" FREAKING BUILT AND RAN A MOTOR!!! If not for that electrical problem that the dyno had, they could have had a shot to WIN THE THING! What did he do? Decided that the expense, effort, time and frustration was too much. Sounds like the guy who wimped out of a fight calling the guy who actually showed up a loser.

I use his cam in my motor and would like to run one in my bb I am building but his attitude towards our EM team just blows chunks.

Don't let him get to ya EM guys. We are all proud of the time, effort, expense and frustration you put up with to do the fantastic job you did. Blow him off. He isn't worth it.

-LS

yeah, that is a buncha bullcrap!! Heck, everyone needs to start planning for the next one right now, by the time it happens, should be the baddest ass engine ever! They wont talk crap then!!

Well my machine shop recommended a Comp Cam anyway so my Hughes will go on Ebay.

Yeah, I'm wondering why they needed to post that on their website??All I've read on moparts about Hughes cams have been more or less positive (other than aditude). I would have considered a huges cam before, but not anymore....

Ouch. Was that even necessary from Hughes? Was anyone actually blaming them?

And "Amatuers", what an insult. I'm sure the "collective" knowledge and years of experience far outweighed what most would call an AMATUER attempt.

I have not had the chance,to meet ANY of the guys that built that engine,or donated parts and labor to the project. But,I HAVE read enough on this board, to know that they had a pretty good grasp on building a very competetive entry. AND,for the most part,they did it on their OWN nickle. Is Mr Hughes GOD? Has he not EVER made a mistake? As far as I'm concerned,I have bought my first,only,and LAST piece of Hughes merchandise. He can KMA.

Sorry, Hughes, but you won't be getting any business from me or a referral to others after those comments. There were some very knowledgeable people in on this build-up that I would not consider to be "amateurs" in any sense. Sounds like someone truly was covering their a$$.

Tim

Well i'm glad I haven't bought any hughes junk because I never will now. Where do they get off with this rebuttle? What the hell are they defending themselves against I don't recall anyone saying it was the "junk hughes cams that caused the failure" .

Salvaged block? ROFL these must be the same people that say don't use a 73 or later block because of 'thin' walls . Anyone in the motor building business knows half the blocks chrysler made aren't suitable for extreme power levels. Why didn't we catch it? Things slip, we were on a tight schedule, Pro's mess up too you know .

LOL I love the paragraph stating what they should have done. Uhh ya think that's a veiled ad or actually more like a plea for Mopar Muscle? No doubt after seing the results they want Dulcich .

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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.

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ROFL you think they're refering to their customers who had cams go flat and post it on the board? I guess when someone asks for a replacement after getting a 'soft' cam they think that's eliciting free parts Hey he thinks we have 'cute' names, maybe he does like us after all

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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.

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Well hmm let me think about this if you're ALWAYS getting burned maybe you're product has ALWAYS been bad? Stop hitting yourself with the hammer, use one of your cams instead.

Not sure where the fallout came from. Anyone know? Regardless, the Engine Masters is open to anyone. Pretty crappy attitude by Hughes anyway. I for one won't use their crap cams just because of their "Sh*t don't stink" attitude. I have had some over the phone dealings with them and pretty much got snubbed. Screw them!
DC