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By 55 GLASS TOP - 9 Years Ago
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What cam is better the one with the hole or the one with the slot to supply oil to the rockers thanks
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By 314 - 9 Years Ago
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its a tossup.just make sure the groove is deep enough if you go with that one.
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By Ted - 9 Years Ago
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My own preference would be the camshafts with the cross-drilled center journal. These do exhibit reduced cam bearing wear at the center journal than what is seen with the grooved center journal camshafts. The grooved center journal camshafts do not promote a dynamic oil wave between the journal and the bearing and because of this, the center cam bearing has a measurable increase in wear over the #1, 2, 4, & 5 cam bearings. That increase in bearing wear is also what shuts off the oil supply to the top end of the engine when using a grooved journal camshaft. As the bearing wears, the bearing material is pushed into the camshaft journal groove which in turn prevents the oil from flowing into and around the groove. Hence the number of overhead oilers that were installed on these engines back in the day.
But the problem now is that replacement camshafts are of the center journal grooved design. There’s been a move to have a given number of Y cam blanks made with no groove so that a number of different options could be employed. Those options would include drilling or grooving the center journals as desired, using the Schumann cam bearings which incorporate the groove on the O.D. of the cam bearing so the oil is transferred to the topend without first having to circumvent the actual camshaft journal, or machining a groove within the center cam hole in the block which does basically the same thing as the Schumann cam bearing set. As of right now, no cam blanks without the groove but I have successfully welded up some of the center journal camshafts and reground those center journals so that there is no groove; these are now in test engines. Unfortunately some of these test engines will take up to 100K miles or more before torn down to actually measure how beneficial this is. This will take awhile and by that time, electric powered vehicles may be the norm.
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By lowrider - 9 Years Ago
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I might add what I recall what my dad said back in '66 when he was supervising me when I was rebuilding the 272 in my 56 Ford. When we were installing the cam bearings he mentioned the early camshaft failures, overhead oilers and all the other yblock problems. We were installing the cross drilled cam bearings in the engine and he mentioned the grooved type and how they contributed to overhead oilers. He said in the last years of production Ford went back to cross drilled camshafts to fix that problem.
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By 57RancheroJim - 9 Years Ago
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That is discouraging information, the Isky cam I used has the grooved journal.. 8000 miles on the engine now and no problem, I guess more time will tell.
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By 55 GLASS TOP - 9 Years Ago
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I do not think I know as much as a lot of guys here ,but I wonder how much today's oils make a diffrence in the effectiveness of cam designs . The older oils seem to gunk up more and clog vital paths . How much is cam design and how much is good clean oil . Just wondering .
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By Ted - 9 Years Ago
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57RancheroJim (11/16/2016)
That is discouraging information, the Isky cam I used has the grooved journal.. 8000 miles on the engine now and no problem, I guess more time will tell.
Jim. Don’t be too discouraged. While my preference is for the cross-drilled camshafts, grooved journal camshafts are what you get when you get a new cam nowadays. The ‘grooved’ Isky cam in my 272 has over 145K miles on it and still no apparent issues. With that 272 having oem cam bearings and the grooved journal at the camshaft, there is still plenty of oil to the top. There is a problem with some of the newer cam bearings being too soft and failing early as a result of the bearing material simply pushing itself into the camshaft groove thus shutting off the top end oil flow.
The cross drilled camshaft does have superior wear properties at the center cam bearing but that setup has a reduced oil flow to the top end simply due to the nature of alternating the oil back and forth between the banks. There are tradeoffs in both designs.
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By 57RancheroJim - 9 Years Ago
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Thanks Ted,
The block I used was bored and cam bearings installed in the late 70's so maybe I will be lucky.
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By DANIEL TINDER - 9 Years Ago
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I seem to remember a warning several years back re: new cam blanks machined with a too shallow journal groove. Has that issue been corrected?
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By 57RancheroJim - 9 Years Ago
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I bought mine about 2 -21/2 years ago and it had the shallow groove, I used that way. No problem with oiling to the rockers, and assume it will be alright if it doesn't get plugged up some how.
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By airman - 9 Years Ago
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i bought my cam from mummert and if i remember right his cams come with the groove ground deeper than the factory depth for better oiling
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By PF Arcand - 9 Years Ago
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That's correct, his advertisment states that his shop regrooves all the cams he sells. If I recall (?) I believe he found out that all the post factory blanks are not to original groove depth specification..
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By FORD DEARBORN - 9 Years Ago
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Greetings to all: In about the last 4 years I purchased one cam from John Mummert and one cam from Oregon Cam. The groove in Mummert's cam was indeed deeper than the other cam. I made the shallow groove in the Oregon cam deeper by putting the cam in V blocks, screwed a stud into the front end to allow rotating (by wife) the cam with a drill motor. With a disc in a Dremmel tool I carefully deepened the groove which turned out very good. Now have about 6000 miles on my 312 and all is well. Hope this helps, JEFF.................
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By oldcarmark - 9 Years Ago
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I had the Groove in my replacement Camshaft deepened before installing. I don't recall what it was deepened to. I got the suggested depth somewhere on this Site. Got way more flow to the top end then was needed. Simply added a restrictor to the feedhole in Rocker Stand by tapping and adding pipe plug with hole drilled in it. That information was also on this Site somewhere. Now I have sufficient flow without excess. One of the Stories I heard regarding One of the reasons for losing Oil Flow when these Cars were a few Years old was that Owners didn't change the Oil and Filter on a regular basis as they had grown accustomed to the Flat Heads many of which did not have a Filter. Simply kept adding Oil as needed instead of changing Oil and Filter. Lack of proper maintenance contributed to an already not great design Engine Lubrication System.
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By 57RancheroJim - 9 Years Ago
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Agreed, back in the early days of Y's a lack of proper maintenance contributed to a lot of the problems and we had great oils like Quaker Sludge etc. LOL
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By aussiebill - 9 Years Ago
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Ted, whats your thoughts on machineing groove on x drilled cam,?
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