Hello, I haven't messed with building a BBB in 10 years. It time to freshen the engine in my street car. It has a pretty big solid flat tappet cam, I'm trying to tame it down some and make it a better street car. What's everyone's thoughts and opinions these days on cams, should I stick a smaller solid flat tappet in it or go hydraulic roller? It's a 464, iron heads, 10.25 to 1 compression. I'm going from a 1050 dominator to a 4150 950 carb. It's a SP1, 5000 stall with 3.73s. It's been 11.0 but I want to drive it more. I plan on power steering, 4L80e, lock up converter ect. Current cam is 25x, 26x @ .050 with .600ish lift. Does anyone make a roller besides TA? Are people still having decent luck with solid cams? If so what brand. The current cam is a Comp with comp lifters that have the wire EDM hole for pressurized oiling. It worked well but had pretty low oil pressure because of the 16 internal leaks Let me know your thoughts. Thanks in advance
For streetability I'd go hyd flat tappet since hyd rollers are unicorns right now. I've had 4 on order through Comp Cams now for 17 months for some 482s we've built. One customer finally went with a TA413, gave up 35hp for same streetability,still in high 500s with al. heads, but the motor is ready to leave the shop. Another went with a solid roller, that was found, that we converted to a hyd roller. the other 2 motors are bagged and still waiting. My machine shop went so far as to grind some billet cores only to be told the high cost and many month time frame to get them. We contacted 3 different grinders,same story.
It goes without saying, but if you go flat tappet, pay close attention to the lifters you use - make sure they have a proper crown and machining that will promote rotation. Consider sending them out to a machinist to have them reground to prevent (or limit anyways) failure during cam break in. I use Mizpah Manufacturing in MN for mine..
Mizpah, I love the name. Its an old Bible reference meaning, "may the Lord watch between me and thee when we are apart from one another"
TA keeps telling us that the next generation of Hyd roller cams/cores are due at any time here. Call them for an update, before you go flat tappet. Decent flat tappet hyd lifters are the unicorn now.. gone, and possibly not likely to return, but that remains to be seen. JW
Yes, it reminded me of this word, mitz·vah noun Judaism noun: mitzvah; plural noun: mitzvoth a precept or commandment. a good deed done from religious duty.
Put me in for 4. Scotty still has my order from oct 2021.after the cores are available there will be a time frame for grinding,who knows how long that will be.
I actually got a flat tappet cam and lifters frm Scotty a few days ago. they were ordered 1/22, he couldnt get blanks till just recently I guess.
I’m waiting on a call from Scotty saying the cam is ready. Ordered it on March 13. He said hydraulic cam cores are starting to be available.
I wonder what starting to be available means, like they are kind of available? It's like I'm kinda pregnant, what does that mean? I've been waiting over four years now, think I've heard about every discriptor known of why the cam is not. Sorry, Covid was a bad time for everybody.
If your droppin down to as smaller Cam then that 10.25 comp may be a issue with street octane. Any flat tappet cam I have run for the last 6 years has been sent out first to be cryo tempered. I found out long ago that 5 to 8 psi of hot pressure at idle is all you need as long as you still see 60 psi by 4500 rpm.
Had an interesting conversation with Mike at TA here last weekend.. the new roller cam for the 455 based motors is actually a 2 piece design.. the flange, fuel pump eccentric, and gear are one piece, and that piece is retained via a bolt to the main camshaft. This allows a couple things.. There is now a timing belt drive available for the iron block 455 engines. The front of this new cam is actually Ford Architecture, so you simply omit the Buick nose piece, and bolt on the belt drive stuff. The other advantage for us is that gone are the days of killing a cam distributor gear, and throwing out the cam.. you simply bolt on a new nosepiece. Apparently the delay has been in hobbing the gear on the new nose pieces. The outfit doing these cores for TA apparently lost/misplaced their hobbing tools.. they have located/replaced them now, and Mike said he expects samples any day now. Good thing, because I have 4 roller cam motors that I could not scrounge/regrind roller cam cores for.. those guys have been patiently waiting, but there is a limit to everyone's patience.. I know mine was surpassed quite a while ago.. but what are you gonna do? JW
Rockwell Superficial HR 30N scale does not leave much of a residual conical divot in hard metal, then convert to Rockwell HRC scale numbers. Vickers leaves a very small pyramid shaped dent but harder to measure across the corners on a curved cam lobe surface. Hardness is very important, without a hardness check how do you know if the camshaft was heat treated properly verifing a too soft or too brittle metal condition? I guess the lifter will check cam hardness for you but usually pisses folks off with that method.
