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RE: Changing camshafts

To: "'Henry Frye'" <henry@henryfrye.com>, fot@autox.team.net
Subject: RE: Changing camshafts
From: Bill Babcock <BillB@bnj.com>
Date: Mon, 7 Mar 2005 06:56:51 -0800
I assumed that everyone was actually talking about doing this to experiment
with different camshafts. Naturally if a lobe is toast the follower is too. 

I know it's heretical, but I've never worried about which follower goes to
which lobe. As long as they are good and flat, and don't have scoring, then
I just use them in whatever hole is handiest. You could make a case for
swapping them around intentionally that sounds just as reasonable as the one
for keeping them matched up. 

I don't know about you folks, but the head on my racing engines comes on and
off so many times I'm thinking of using some kind of dzus fitting. I can R&R
it in about two hours with some help. Dumb things like pulling out a pushrod
a little too fast, sucking out the follower (once), or breaking a head stud
off during retorquing (once), or gasket leaks (many) have made me an expert
at high-speed head pulling. 

For that matter, I carry rod and center main bearings, sleeves and pistons,
spare oil pump, water pump, etc.. I don't pop a beer, I pop the oil pan and
start fixing. Might as well, going to need to fix it anyway. At the track
there's usually someone there to pass the wrenches. 

-----Original Message-----
From: owner-fot@autox.team.net [mailto:owner-fot@autox.team.net] On Behalf
Of Henry Frye
Sent: Monday, March 07, 2005 6:31 AM
To: fot@autox.team.net
Subject: Re: Changing camshafts

At 11:49 AM 03/06/2005 -0800, kas kastner wrote:
>  For those that might some day want to change a cam or some other 
>camshaft duty in the pits without taking off the head, make preparation 
>before hand as
>follows:

As neat as this sounds, I can't ever imagine wanting to change out a
camshaft in the paddock. If something happened to the cam or a tappet that
wiped out a lobe, the remnants of the calamity are in the engine. I have way
too much invested in engine parts to come to any conclusion other than push
it into the trailer and open a cold one. It's spectator time. Those 
big purses we are racing for are not worth trashing expensive bits, IMHO.
;-)

Not to mention that I always thought it is frowned upon to reuse tappets on
different cams.

Now changing out a cam for some back to back pulls on an engine dyno, that
sounds like a worthy cause. But before I put that engine in a race car I
would probably want to refresh the tappets.


Getting impatient waiting for Spring in New England.........

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