Ted, whats your thoughts on machineing groove on x drilled cam,?


  AussieBill            YYYY    Forever Y Block     YYYY

 Down Under, Australia

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

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.  

  

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.................


64F100 57FAIRLANE500

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..   


Paul

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

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.

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?

6 VOLTS/POS. GRD. NW INDIANA

Thanks Ted,
The block I used was bored and cam bearings installed in the late 70's so maybe I will be lucky.

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.

Lorena, Texas (South of Waco)