Is it feasible to metal spray a cam?

[Bob Pagano]

Someone grinds a cam for a 6 , what about the stockers like Bushmaker and I cant remember the other one. Look them up
Bill,s cell# 206 793 -1276

[Phillip marvetz]

Just an idea here, I have a iron roller cam from comp in one of the bracket cars. I was concerned it wasn't a billet steel like all the other rollers I had bought from them when it arrived but after a phone call I was informed that they do make iron roller cams also, It seem to be the same material as a flat tappet cam just ground without the crown on the lobe. You should be able to have them grind a cam like this for the slant also. Have you figured out the lifters yet? How much lift are you trying to get?

[bill dedman]

Originally Posted by Phillip marvetz

Just an idea here, I have a iron roller cam from comp in one of the bracket cars. I was concerned it wasn't a billet steel like all the other rollers I had bought from them when it arrived but after a phone call I was informed that they do make iron roller cams also, It seem to be the same material as a flat tappet cam just ground without the crown on the lobe. You should be able to have them grind a cam like this for the slant also. Have you figured out the lifters yet? How much lift are you trying to get?

I'll call Comp again, but the last time I talked to them they had NO rollers for the /6 motor.
That was about a year ago...

I only need .500" lift. This is a race-only app, so I am not much concerned about longivity.

I'll let you know what they say.

Thanks for the info!!!

[bill dedman]

Originally Posted by bill dedman

I'll call Comp again, but the last time I talked to them they had NO rollers for the /6 motor.
That was about a year ago...

I only need .500" lift. This is a race-only app, so I am not much concerned about longivity.

I'll let you know what they say.

Thanks for the info!!!

Well, Phillip, I called Comp Cams and talked to a tech there named "Buggy."

Here's what he said: " I don't know where Phillip got a roller cam for a /6, but we don't grind one. We have NO blanks for a /6 roller motor. If you send us a blank, maybe we could grind you one, but we have no source for a roller blank for that motor."

So, maybe somebody ELSE ground that iron roller cam for you????

Curious minds want to know....

[Charles Rainey]

Philip/Bill
I cannot tell you if you can metal spray a cam and make it live, but I can tell you what I tried. A few years back I wanted to make my on grind, so I metal sprayed a cast cam just to try. Man I CNC "grinded" this cam and it looked awesome. Put a set of rollers on it and seemed to be ok. Well I lost control of the rpm and every thing in the engine was wearing metal spray. Bearings and pistons looked awesome. i got some picture some place but I hid them so no one would know how dumb I was. I think what happened was that I lost control of the roller lifter and it banged the shaft and just peeled the spray right off or it was the point contact of the roller. Dont know which cause I was afraid to talked to any body about it cause I was so dumb. But what I finally did was get a billet steel blank and had a guy with a lathe to make me a billet with all the knobs on it then I sent and had it ground. Might want to try that if you have some one handy on a lathe. CNC grinders make it pretty easy for people like Lunati or Comp to do that now. Was hard to do when you had to use masters

[bill dedman]

Originally Posted by Charles Rainey

Philip/Bill
I cannot tell you if you can metal spray a cam and make it live, but I can tell you what I tried. A few years back I wanted to make my on grind, so I metal sprayed a cast cam just to try. Man I CNC "grinded" this cam and it looked awesome. Put a set of rollers on it and seemed to be ok. Well I lost control of the rpm and every thing in the engine was wearing metal spray. Bearings and pistons looked awesome. i got some picture some place but I hid them so no one would know how dumb I was. I think what happened was that I lost control of the roller lifter and it banged the shaft and just peeled the spray right off or it was the point contact of the roller. Dont know which cause I was afraid to talked to any body about it cause I was so dumb. But what I finally did was get a billet steel blank and had a guy with a lathe to make me a billet with all the knobs on it then I sent and had it ground. Might want to try that if you have some one handy on a lathe. CNC grinders make it pretty easy for people like Lunati or Comp to do that now. Was hard to do when you had to use masters

Thanks for that info. Where did you get it sprayed?

[Philip Saran]

Bill,

This may be a long shot, but try contacting this company,
they specialize in all things 6 cylinder.

CLIFFORD PERFORMANCE PRODUCTS INC.
22850 Sheffield Crt
Wildomar, CA 92595

1-951-471-1161 or Fax 1-951-471-0993

www.cliffordperformance.net

email for tech: Larry@cliffordperformance.net

[Charles Rainey]

Bill
The place that did mine is no longer in business but the best place too look is a industrial repair shop. The ones that use spray process is people that repair shafts for electric motors or conveyor repair. Many industrial repair shops use them every day. I really feel it will work if the point load contact is not too high. The process used to day is more stable than what I used then and I was really suprised how hard the surface was. Had too be ground as it was well into the Rockwell C scale. And it takes very little time to do it. You will need to have some high temp insulation to put between each journal as you spray.
charles

[Tom Goldman]

Bill, i'd look into grinding on a cast core.
Years ago when I first started building AMC engines ,I bought a bunch of parts from a circle track racer who was going to a BBC engine .
Amongst the parts were several cast cams that were reground into rollers.
I never had any wear issues with them and one is still in use today, 39 years later!
Lunati ground them ,and they were nitrided. Most hydraulic cams have a base circle around 1.300" , these were ground to a 1.150" base circle ,which gave plenty of meat to grind the flanks.

One note about metal spraying. I used to metal spray when I worked for General Electric.
Metal spray works very well in applications such as main bearing surfaces where the loading is constant ,and when the area to be sprayed can be undercut ,sprayed and then ground to size. Other surfaces we sprayed usually were not as durable.

[Phillip marvetz]

Originally Posted by bill dedman

Well, Phillip, I called Comp Cams and talked to a tech there named "Buggy."

Here's what he said: " I don't know where Phillip got a roller cam for a /6, but we don't grind one. We have NO blanks for a /6 roller motor. If you send us a blank, maybe we could grind you one, but we have no source for a roller blank for that motor."

So, maybe somebody ELSE ground that iron roller cam for you????

Curious minds want to know....

The cam I have is for a 360 but it is a comp part#20-742-9, serial #ul1669-04, grind #crsxr274r-10. I talked to Tim Cole when I took it out of the box and saw it was not a billet core and he told me some of the street rollers were done this way. Based on this they should be able to grind you a cam from a standard iron blank. I know for a fact they have slant six cores because they have made me a couple for the stocker..