Hey there

I'm associating with a new "business partner" (we're about to loose a lot of money, ) And I'll be producing new steel cam blanks. I think I can come up with a very interesting pricing and I look forward to hear from racers and gurus about original design improvement.

If things go good with this first thing, we might take a dive into proucing a good aluminium head for the slant. (stage 2 of our so called business together)

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Juan Ignacio Caino

Please use e-mail button istead of PM'ing. I do log in sometimes but I'll be answering quicker thru e-mail.

This is pretty exciting! Are you thinking flat tappet or Roller cams? Or both?

I'm thinking a steel blank so any lobe profile can be used. Actually this idea comes from DD. I read on one of his post that the issue of getting a roller cam would be the stress and that using cast iron wasn't a good idea... so I guess let's fill in the blanks if everybody can cover a piece of what's needed, we can have as many perfomance stocked parts for our /6's as there are for V8's (well, not as many but actually getting one steel blank or two is near impossible nowadays...)

Other things would be that yu would be able to order it w/o gas pump cam, or with hardened lobes or journals or oil/dist gear or everything...

I wouldn offer grinds, I would respond solely for products that are produced under my personal supervision... you know cam grinders everywhere... I have my good custom cam grinders but they mess up sometimes... I can stand for my tooling equipment and work, not for third parties

How much do you guys thiink is worth one good blank like this? also the back can be machined to fit a bearing on the block so cam walk wouldn't chew thru...

I'm trying to figure out if this can be done in top notch quality

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Juan Ignacio Caino

Please use e-mail button istead of PM'ing. I do log in sometimes but I'll be answering quicker thru e-mail.

Well, the last set of roller cam blanks that were made (about 10) WITH oil pump/dizzy gear went for around $7-800/blank. If you got down to $4-500, I would consider one. I would think $300/blank would get a lot more people into it.

Lou

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Home of Slant6-powered fun machines since 1988

I would consider one or two at the above mentioned 300 us price range.
Thanks
Frank

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Scrapple: Because a mind is a terrible thing to waste.
73 Duster - Race Car
66 Dart Wagon - DD
178" FED
82 D150
All Slant powered

I'll have to do the math but I think that I can come up with 300 a piece air shipping (economy) included. How's that sound?

So far I'm only waiting to hear from yu racers and hi po slant users about what stee to use, heat treatment, etc.

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Juan Ignacio Caino

Please use e-mail button istead of PM'ing. I do log in sometimes but I'll be answering quicker thru e-mail.

any specs on the aluminum head? i know you guys are working on the cam blanks first but i was just curious how far the developement of the idea of an aluminum head was. awesome idea, by the way.

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1975 Dart Swinger 225 2bbl

A $300 SL6 steel cam that includes air shipment sounds great but I hate to say that it's not realistic, there is way to much machining involved.
The SL6 cam is challenging to make because of the distributor gear's location in the center of the cam and having cam lobes located right next to the gear. A special gear "hobber" machine and "worm hob" cutter is needed to do the gear machining.
8620 / 8630 is the steel alloy most roller cams are made of. Chrome-Moly steels are also used in some applications.
The heat treatment process is special for steel cams. The cam is machined and rough ground to within .010 of final lobe size. The whole cam is then copper 'flash' electroplated and then the copper flashing is ground-off the lobe surfaces that are to be hardened. The copper 'skin' acts as a masking to keep the shank of the cam from getting through hardened and brittle.
Once the cam is masked and has the lobe surfaces exposed, the cam is heat treated and then gets a light finish grind to breng everything into final specs. The heat treatment has a 'case depth' so you need to have the cam's lobe profile close to final size before going to heat treat. This does not give much flexability on making a 'one blank for all lobe profiles' steel cam blank.

The good news, auto manufactures have developed a special 'austemper' ductile cast iron that is being used for roller cams. The special iron can be heat treated in a way that gives it toughness with-out the brittleness and cracking common with heat treated cast iron.
Article

So cast a special chemistry ductile cast iron cam blank, machine it and have it austempered for the lower cost solution.

US$1=AR$3.10

Maybe US$300 is a little "short" but not far fedged.

So hardening must be done after grinding the profile... if I can machine the blank with the center gear, and you'd have to take care of getting it to a cam grinder then harden it... would be some interest out there in the cam blanks?

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Juan Ignacio Caino

Please use e-mail button istead of PM'ing. I do log in sometimes but I'll be answering quicker thru e-mail.