Who's flat solid cam? SB

I'm need a flat solid cam for my 340, the hydraulic in it now is bad. This is the motor I built for my Dart in 03 and replaced it with a 408 in 09. I bagged the short block and put it on a shelf.

Over the winter I pulled the 408 to freshen it and found some odd cam and main bearing wear and the flat solid cam was on it's way out. I bought a 395" R1, Indy head motor, sold the rotating assembly and am gathering parts for a 434" build.

So..........I thought I'd bring the 340 out of moth balls, put the heads and intake back on, check the bearings and run the pi$$ out of it until I have the new motor built. Wrong! While looking it over today before mounting it on the engine stand I noticed some pitting on the nose of one of the lobes. After closer inspection there is another lobe showing the same, so this cam was on it's way out too. Both cams were from the same company and had been ran for about five years.

I need another cam. Who do you guys recommend?

Racer Brown. Call Jim at 1-410-866-7660. Hope his business didn't get burned down as he is in Baltimore MD. ST-21 for street/strip or STX-21 for a car w/some compression, converter, and gear. Jim will get you set up with a perfect cam for your combo.

Dan this a pump gas deal, 11.2-1 with ported Edelbrocks and either a Victor 340 or a Weiand X-cellerator, 1 7/8" Hedmans, 3260# Dart.

I have always called Dwayne Porter, and had him spec and order a cam for me. He is the man

Bullet Cams

Did you mic that cam to be sure it is bad? How did the lifter look? I have had good luck with Hughes cams over the years.

I would also inquire about EDM or Grooved lifters

I had an old erson cam in a 340 once that worked real good. it was a 12:1 340 though and pulled hard right thru 7000rpm.
258/258@50-.535/.535 on a 107. 340 had ported J heads. my car was a 4 speed then with a 4.56 gear. that was a solid flat tappet. hope this helps

I've also had very good results w/ the cam Dwayne spec'd & supplied.

Totally agree with this.

I haven't miced the cam. The 340 cam has two lobes that have pitting on the nose of the cam. one of the lobes shows wear all the way across the lobe with pits that will catch you fingernail. The bottom of that lifter looks to have been hit with a tiny needle scaler. The other lobe is just starting to pit. The rest of the lifters and lobes look perfect.

The 408 had EDM lifters in it and has several lobes and lifters as I described above.

What company? Was it a big cam? What oil were you using?

The hydraulic was around 240 @ .050, .590 lift the solid was 260 @ .050, .630 lift. The oil was Rotella diesel with a zinc additive. No point in naming the cam company and starting a Moparts witch hunt.

X2

Joey

Same here as Dwayne speced and ground my cam and supplied the EDM lifters and I could not be happier. Ron

How much compression does the STX-21 need to work well?

X 3 for Bullet

Clay Smith Cams.

Predator cam Mt Carmel pa. He has lots of different Mopar cam cores.

The STH42 I put in my 340 knocked off nearly .4 on my 340 vs a comp XE295HL. The ST-21 is the STH-42's evil twin.

What ever cam you go with I would dump the rottela in favor of dedicated race
Oil like VR1 or Brad Penn just to name a couple.

Rotella works in my motor, Brett Millers motors and Fishy340, who just made 813hp na with his small block on the dyno, just fine. I have better oil pressure with rotella 15\40 then Brad Penn 20\50.

71 Dart has a Hughes 260/264
71 Demon has a Hughes 256/265
71 Duster has MP 590 soon to changed to a Hughes 260/264

I like Jim at RB and ran pretty well w/ an ST-21 in my 440. But those are some OLD grinds, and cam lobes have evolved dramatically in the decades since those masters were hand-designed.

The biggest difference, IMO, is valve train stability at high(er) RPM. When I dynoed three different cams (two UltraDyne .904" SFT and the ST-21), the UltraDynes would rev cleanly to about 6800, even though that was well past the HP peak. The Racer Brown, on the other hand, went into total valve train crash about 6400-6500. On the the track, if I was running my 28" tall tires insted of my 29", the shorter tires would put the engine right up into the valve float at peak RPM and the car would just freakin' stop accelerating. If I ran the 29" tires, the taller tires kept the RPM down enough to keep from having to rev that high and it would pull about 2 MPH more.

This was using ported OEM heads w/ 3/8"-stem 2.14" x 1.81" valves and valve springs having about 140#s closed and 380# open pressure, so it wasn't a lack of spring load. The dynamics are simply crude in comparison by virtue of how long ago they were designed.

I think the question was about small block cams. Funny how we have SEVERAL small blocks on this site running 9's with bargain basement heads with Jim's (Racer Brown) cams.

Understood, but the lobes aren't any different when they're ground on a SB core than a BB. And that's why I pointed out the valve style (heavy 3/8" BB valves) and spring load used to put some context around the results.

The ST-21 was in my car when it ran its first 10.9 pass, so I'm not saying they don't work OK. But lobe designs have advanced since the more popular Racer Brown profiles came out in the '60s. I believe the info that I provided is an example of how that shows up in the real world.

I really like the Lunati voodoo solids. My pumpgas 340 runs real hard & makes great power with the one they suggested for my combo, also running edm lifters aswell.

Call Hughes Engines and they will help you decide which of their cams you need. I always had good luck with their solid cams.

Thanks guys , the 340 has some other issues so I'll concentrate on the 434 build. I thought this would be a cheap way to get the Dart back on the road, but I was wrong. If I'm going to spend $1000 I'll spend it on the new engine.