Technical Hydraulic Flat Tappet Cam Lubrication @ Assembly?

Is that before or after "break in" ? If its before break in, I would put fresh cam lube on after it sits that long. Its nice that you are putting so much effort into trying to really help your friend............

My understanding as of about a year ago was that Johnson no longer makes flat tappet lifters. Unless things have changed since then, I believe he only makes roller lifters. I bought a set from him and either he or the distributor told me that. I bought a Howards cam to go with them. Comp Cams kept lying about shipping dates (3 times for 7 months and then I found out they weren't even trying to get the roller cores and they were just throwing arbitrary shipping dates out with no expectation of meeting them. This was for a 500 Cad which is a standard cam listing in their catalog, not something really special. Summit used to stock them when they were available. I was also told that Billy Godbold no longer works there, but haven't verified that. Anyway, contacted Howards......got a 2 month ship date..........and actually got the cam when promised.
I think Comp has gotten too big for its britches.......IMHO Funny thing was that I planned to buy about $8K in additional corporate speed parts from them, and now I buy elsewhere instead. Never liked liars...........

 

I was thinking that I could lube with ***embly lube and degree the cam in then remove it and apply the moly to the lobes. Re***emble and it only needs turned over two more revolutions to set the valves and drop the distributor. I thought that would be OK. If the moly is gone in 2 revs, then I don't know how much good it was doing. I want to get this engine together, ready to install and start. Who knows what can happen in 5 or 6 months. I quit planning that far in advance and am happy as hell when I wake up each morning...so far.
As far as being nice, I am just paying back what Tom paid forward! He is my son's next door neighbor and my long time hot rod buddy. When we built my son's house, without my asking, Tom volunteered a lot of hours. From the start of the floor system, to framing, to setting trusses, to putting on the roof deck. He was an enormous amount of help. He's an excellent carpenter just not so much a motor builder. He asked. I said yes.

 

For a fresh flat-tappet engine that wasn't going to be broken-in for a month or longer, I'd look into a cam that has a "Parkerized" finish on the lobes. As I understood it, the finish was just porous enough that it helped to absorb and hold any ***embly lube that was applied. Years ago many replacement cams got this surface treatment automatically at time of manufacture. I've seen it more recently mentioned that a lot of cam grinders can still supply this Parkerized finish for an additional charge.

 

Just for information, Parkerizing is just an iron phosphate coating on the surface. Parkerizing or Parkerized is a brand name. The iron phosphate is a crystalline surface that does help hold the lube. It is worn off rather quickly, but serves the purpose.

 

You can probably put the moly lube on the lobes just by removing the lifters and also coating the lifter bottoms. The cam journals get ***embly lube not moly lube..........although some people have put the moly on everything.

 

I stuffed this cam in the block as soon as I got it. Didn't really look at it. I have it back out and gave it a good look tonight. It seems there is some kind of coating? on it. It is black and kind of appears to be rough or maybe a better word is porous. But it doesn't feel rough. Right on the nose of the cam I can see just a little bit of shiny lobe like the coating rubbed off when I was putting a little pressure on the lifters to check rotation. I'm wondering if this might be Parkerizing?

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phosphate_conversion_coating

 

Thanks! After reading that, I am convinced this cam has been Parkerized. It is a custom cam from Jones Cam Designs. Not from one of the big names. So maybe.