So I'm out in my garage tearing down last year's motor. It's been on a stand for the past year - victim of chewed up lifters. I remove all of the valve ***emblies in preparation of pulling lifters and cam to replace with the stock items a pulled when the hot stuff went in a year and half ago. Well I was suprised to find that everything came right out the top side save one lifter. I had to drop it out the bottom past a maze of counter weights and connecting rods. Lifter was a crazy looking mushroomed thing. No real problem though. I then take the camshaft out being very careful not to nick the cam bearings. A little sloppy but I think I did alright there. So I start looking the cam over. There it is engraved on the side. "ISKY" with some numbers below and the term "MAX1". This was it. The cam I spent hard earned dough on to get little more than a few months of use from. Yeah, I understand that's hot rodding sometimes. But that doesn't mean I have to just shrug my shoulders and get all p***ive about it. This is my cam damnit... So I start poking around - looking closer. Conversation in my head went something like, "Huh... there's the lobe. Crazy...... doesn't look so bad really. Everything seems smooth and normal except those divits where the lifter edge gored it." It was then I remembered reading about a certain hopped up motor in one of the little books and the phrase "...with a cam he ground himself by hand." jumped out at me. Then BAM... an image of Flatdog and his son welding up a windowed flathead block flashed at me. Wonder if I could just weld the ****er? The more I looked the more sense it made. I'm just filling the divits from the lifter. And would I even have to do that? The black and white photo lies a little. There is no large step accross the face of the lobe. Just a divit on each side with a scuff mark connecting them. I could really take my time and get the lobe smooth. So then I picked up the lifter and turned it between my fingers. Even as mushroomed and ****ed up as it looked it was still spinning in the bore. Check the spiral-ish ridges around the outside. So I'm thinking to try it makes even more sense now. What do I have to lose really? I have the set of adjustable lifters that were with the stock cam. Plop those in place and run it. At most I've ruined my chances of going back to a stock motor. Would that be such a bad thing?
Welding it is no sweat,but then what? will it still be straight? .what is the rockwell hardness of the cam face? do you know how to reharden it? Same goes for the tappet,it should have a radius that causes the tappet to rotate.if the radius isn't correct how will you rectify that ? Down here in OZ it's easy there are at least two cam grinders who will repair a damaged cam,but in your case I would phone these guys and see if they would do it for you. http://www.americancustomcam.com/ or these.. http://www.oregoncamshaft.com/regrinding.html
Mercmad, if welding the cam lobe is no sweat why would you worry about the straightness? If you have to worry about deformation then by definition you do have to sweat over the welding. Rockwell hardness ? Why not the more universally accepted Brinell, or Shore or Vickers scales? As for hardening do you know what to do? Personally I would use a fluidised salt vaccuum bed furnace, but some I know would risk it in a Air Recirculated Heat Treatment furnace, would you, like us old Blacksmiths heat it slowly over a fire and then quench? What would you quench it in water or oil? Come to think of it... first rule of heat treatment is "know what type of metal you are trying to treat". Now if you were designing performance cams, what steel would you specify, 4140?, EN 26, 4340, a Superalloy? And then!!! once you know what the metal is, then and only then will you able to form an opinion on whether welding is possible or desirable. Now... back to the question at hand, Kevin, my suggestion would be to show it to someone who knows. They might just say something like take the sharp edges off, and you maybe have enough surface area on the lobe to keep the damm thing running.
The cam makers out there can do it. I don't know if they will though (especially on a used cam). It is done in the Nextel Cup series as they have to run flat tappets (Damn rules anyhow) and they are running more or less roller profiles. I don't know what they weld to it but it is hard as hell. Works like the temper on a blade. Hard in the right spot to hold its' shape but ductile enough elsewhere not to be brittle. I would call Isky and see what they can do.
i use to work out of a go kart shop that raced briggsand strattons,they would have there stock cams flamed sprayed with a matrix mix of carbide and something else when it was done it had a rockwell of over 52.the process was done with a regular cutting torch with a small hopper on tp the material started in powder form annd sprayed on in a molten state then we would regrind the cams so the base circle would remain large .this process is easy and cheep the only cost would be to have the lobe re ground.maybe moon?
by the way dont forget to tear down the rest of the motor and get it flushed out real good to get all the ground up lifter and cam material out of it. New bearings are in order too. Sounds like the cam wasnt broken in correctly last year.
Don't try this at home......... Spend a few bucks and have it done right. Personally, I'd just get a new one, wouldn't take the chance. Go roller and be done with the worry of lobe wear.
Hey, at the very least, it might make a neat piece of "art" to mount on the wall with a story to tell and a reminder of how to properly break in a cam. Good luck - it would be a shame to make matters worse though, and as someone stated before, make sure to get all the miscellaneous debris out.
Welding up worn cam lobes is older than dirt. I mean how else does anybody think the Cam grinders add material to cam lobes? The 8 camlobes that had to be reindexed to make RVS FLO http://cleverlever99.blogspot.com/ are completely made of weld and they work great. Welding is not a problem and all good cam grinders check the cam for straightness after evry application of heating
Why would you bother??? Price of a new cam and lifters would be cheaper.. By the way, Buy A COMP CAM....
You can have the cam welded.... but the welded material is WAY harder than the original cam material. They used to sell Race cams that were welded, They were called HARD FACE OVERLAY and required a CHILLED IRON LIFTER which are hard to find since they dont make them anymore. Standard solids dont work, (ask me how i know ).. Now you didnt say what engine this is, if it a Small Block Belly ****on.. Just go out and buy a cam & lifter kit. If its an odd ball engine, Package it up & send it to a cam grinder & see if it can be re~ground. You dont want to WELD or FLAMESPRAY a cam in your street engine, Your looking for another failure if you do. I had a cam reground at CLAY SMITH for around $125.00
Kev, I dont have the contact info but it has been posted here before. Call Chris Nielson Cams. I think he is out in Utah now, ask Loudpedal?
The new oils **** for flat tappet cams, all the Zinc and whatever else has been removed. I saw a cam site recently,that advertised welding cams for around $70 a lobe.
What motor is this,Dema Elgin,Elgins grinding, is in Santa Rosa Ca I think, he moved from Redwood City can repair this and help you with why it happened.
seems like you should be able to Tig it up and file/polish it down, until you read everyones posts! You can probably ebay it with warning and get within $50 of a replacement TP
My take... You can probably get away with welding and grinding. But I wouldn't do it. There's just too much work and money invested in these things to not install something that you can be sure of no problem. As said, You'll be investing plenty regrinding and heat treating. Consider, Ion Nitriting for hardening the surface if you do.
No kidding! Haha. But that's why I'm here and that's why I ask the questions. Learned a lot from this thread so thanks everyone.
Here's another source for regrinding ... Delta camshaft From their site.... "Custom camshaft grinding to factory or performance profiles. Camshaft repairs such as, lobe welding, bearing areas repaired, hard chrome build-up, thrust areas welded, dowel pins repaired, keyways repaired. Rocker arm ***embly rebuilding, rocker arm resurfacing, follower resurfacing, and lifter regrinding on solid and obsolete hyd. applications."
The only sane, correct, and safe way is to replace it or have it fixed by a pro who will cost twice as much as replacing it... As a hotrodder, you may have noted that your actions may not always square exactly with any of those terms...especially sane. The depression era farmer/1950's dirtbag backyard car builder mentalites are always an option for old Ford work, and aren't always wrong... Flatheads with mild cams like this have extremely low pressure cam/lifter contact by any modern standards...cam failures are rare excepth with **** repro lifters as experienced by you and at least one other HAMBer... You'll be breaking in new lifters anyway, presumably a different brand...you're already running a repaired "non-repairable" Merc block, I believe... Why not be an idiot and see if you can pull this off too?? I see two issues: Lobe shape adjacent to damage and hardness/wear characteristics. What I see from the pictures, not very clear on my monitor, is a circle of localized damage on flank of lifter with good lifter surface 3/4 inch away radially and a sliver of good surface on each side of the bad plug...is that correct? All my bets are off if damage extends to shape of lobe uphill from there, but that's my interpretation of what I can see. If original lobe shape is still there over the nose and all around pit--no problem on shape from my primitive and warped perspective. There is a knack to using a file in such a way that it finds and follows good surface while removing bad convexities...hard to describe, but result is file cutting til it touched the smooth, then letting it glide on the smooth to find further roughness. Dig? Hardness--here you need an arc welding guru/salesman...you sure as hell don't want farmer hard surfacing rod, you want some much softer grade that cools to fileable, as close to original as possible. The right grouchy old welder will know what. There, anyone accepting those theories should have his head examined, or in this case his shortblock. I accept no responsibility for the inevitable personal injuries, fiscal disaster, smoked engine, divorce, alcoholic dismal suicide in flophouse, etc., that result from my incoherent ravings.
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