Bouncing around again.
For some time now I've been wrenching my hands together, worried about the prospect of having to run a flat tappet camshaft. Having an untested megasquirt as my ECU, w/o a decent start-up base map would be just begging for that flat tappet camshaft to fail during break-in if I wasn't able to start the car, and immediately run it for 20-30 minutes at 2-2500 rpm. That nightmare, coupled to the diminished zinc ratio in motor oil also has been responsible for premature cam failure even if I get past the break-in.
So for me,....I was willing to pay for a custom built roller so I could sleep at night.
Fortunately though, I found what I was looking for. Tigue is a cam grinder in Australia that actually has an application to fit my engine. So it looks like I'll be running a mechanical roller in this engine after all. The cam will be small though, w/ it being a street driver only. From what I read, I should be able to use a Comp Cams BBF roller lifter. I guess we'll see soon enough, I ordered a guinea pig set from Summit last night. Since I was so excited that I won't have to worry about killing a flat tappet cam, I went down last night and started the mods to the block to make the whole head swap work.
This is what the deck looks like on my ugly little banger before you have to hog the lifter galley. Since a crossflow head has canted valves, the pushrods need additional room to operate those valves,...so you gotta get out a jig saw, and a die grinder. You can see the Sharpie lines on the bottom two holes of the cutout I was supposed to make.
1 hour later I do this:
Even as big as they are now, they are still not big enough. The mod requires that I bolt a piece of 1/4"x1-1/4" flat bar along side, and fill the top gap w/ epoxy, and then grind even more to what will amount to actually grinding through the top side of the block into the epoxy. Since the only thing that happens on that side of the block is oil drain back, the plated epoxy solution will be fine.
This is where I stopped grinding. I actually used a 1/4" shank router instead of a die grinder (my poor man's Bridgeport) to get the opening smoothed out after I rough cut it w/ a jig saw. When the grindings' done, even the small remaining margin you see will be gone. The flat bar acts as a trap to hold the JB weld in the bevel. I'll be able to bolt the plate to the factory bosses you see that are obvious in the pic.
I'm not the only guy doing this, so I can't take credit for it. There are numerous guys in AUS running a roller in their engines. This guy is one of them. The link shows his engine, and has a sound clip down the page. While his cam is bigger than the one I will have, the sound of the engine is worth a million bucks:
http://www.xfalcon.com/forums/index.php?/topic/22916-xflow-story/
For some time now I've been wrenching my hands together, worried about the prospect of having to run a flat tappet camshaft. Having an untested megasquirt as my ECU, w/o a decent start-up base map would be just begging for that flat tappet camshaft to fail during break-in if I wasn't able to start the car, and immediately run it for 20-30 minutes at 2-2500 rpm. That nightmare, coupled to the diminished zinc ratio in motor oil also has been responsible for premature cam failure even if I get past the break-in.
So for me,....I was willing to pay for a custom built roller so I could sleep at night.
Fortunately though, I found what I was looking for. Tigue is a cam grinder in Australia that actually has an application to fit my engine. So it looks like I'll be running a mechanical roller in this engine after all. The cam will be small though, w/ it being a street driver only. From what I read, I should be able to use a Comp Cams BBF roller lifter. I guess we'll see soon enough, I ordered a guinea pig set from Summit last night. Since I was so excited that I won't have to worry about killing a flat tappet cam, I went down last night and started the mods to the block to make the whole head swap work.
This is what the deck looks like on my ugly little banger before you have to hog the lifter galley. Since a crossflow head has canted valves, the pushrods need additional room to operate those valves,...so you gotta get out a jig saw, and a die grinder. You can see the Sharpie lines on the bottom two holes of the cutout I was supposed to make.
1 hour later I do this:
Even as big as they are now, they are still not big enough. The mod requires that I bolt a piece of 1/4"x1-1/4" flat bar along side, and fill the top gap w/ epoxy, and then grind even more to what will amount to actually grinding through the top side of the block into the epoxy. Since the only thing that happens on that side of the block is oil drain back, the plated epoxy solution will be fine.
This is where I stopped grinding. I actually used a 1/4" shank router instead of a die grinder (my poor man's Bridgeport) to get the opening smoothed out after I rough cut it w/ a jig saw. When the grindings' done, even the small remaining margin you see will be gone. The flat bar acts as a trap to hold the JB weld in the bevel. I'll be able to bolt the plate to the factory bosses you see that are obvious in the pic.
I'm not the only guy doing this, so I can't take credit for it. There are numerous guys in AUS running a roller in their engines. This guy is one of them. The link shows his engine, and has a sound clip down the page. While his cam is bigger than the one I will have, the sound of the engine is worth a million bucks:
http://www.xfalcon.com/forums/index.php?/topic/22916-xflow-story/
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