Roller cam bearings

[HP HUNTER]

Originally Posted by carl hinkson

DING DING DING We have a winner. A few years ago I talked to one of the guys at Grumpy Jenkins shop and they said it was night a day difference between Roller cam bearings and using babbit as roller cam bearings produce a lot of unwanted harmonics.

It takes more power to move all those needle bearings VS the cam sliding on a film of oil.

I blue print bore a lot of blocks for 55MM cam journals for other shops and builders babbit seems like the way to go. Also machine some of the OEM 350 blocks to 2.120 and use the GMP-1 cam bearings for BBC journals.

Carl

Some years back I had a contract to build Winston West 9.1 comp 390 carbed 358 engines. We were quite sucessful and won several races, every engine we built had roller cam bearings, but also were dry sump. I never saw any weird stuff going on in those engines, they made right at 600 HP. Not going to say there was no harmonics, but we never had problems. We also built some with 55 MM babbit, I never saw any difference on the dyno, I did like getting rid of the oil leaks.