Scratched a cam bearing. Now what?
I'd stick a cam in it and make 10 sec runs until it kicked a delaminated rod bearing out the side. LOL
For piece of mind just change the things, at least you'll know the cam bearings are good.
Here’s one for you.
My uncle had a 1972 Pontiac GP. Gold with a white vinyl top and white interior. It was a beautiful car.
In fact I’ve mentioned the car before. I was a cocky punk. I was making money doing some street racing and my uncle heard about it.
My dumb *** cousin (his son) who struggles to drive a shopping cart, and he told my uncle how I drive and how cocky I was.
Anyway, my cousin told him how I was driving. Slow shifts. Bad launch techniques. He didn’t know that but my uncle did.
So he calls me out!
He kicked my *** sideways. Of course, I said you have more inches, and automatic.
So we swap cars and he uses my car to humble my ***. Smoked me like a Philly blunt.
I said show me how you did it. He said no chance until you fix your head.
It took a couple of months before he taught me. The humiliation of smoking me in my own car after he smoked me with his car and the wait to learn was well worth the price. I made a lot of money, a lot more money after I really learned how to drive a clutch.
All that for this. About 5 years later my uncle decides to change the cam in the Poncho. My dad says Dennis is changing cams. Are you going to help us. I can’t say no so off we go.
We get it apart and the first thing we see are the cam bearings. They were chowdered. Way worse than the OP.
My dad and uncle say, well we need to change those out. I said then I’m out. I’m not pulling this pig out to install cam bearings in it. Who knows what else will be looking crunchy.
My uncle says let’s do it in the car. I say ok, you R&R the transmission and I’ll do the bearings. Then he says well ****.
I said yeah, ****. Then I said was it running? Yes. Did it have good oil pressure? Yes. Did it make any noise? Nope. Then WTF are we talking about.
It’s running fine and you had zero clue there’s an issue. Let’s change the cam and go. If you have an issue later, we can fix it then.
I was younger then. Today is never do that. Live and learn.
He signs off on it and goes and get the cam. It’s a 300 Isky hydraulic! I’m like WTF Dennis? Did you buy the cam from the bottom of the page?
He’s says nope. I called around and the agreement is this is THE cam. I’m thinking ok, you did the checking on things, we should be golden.
He did have a 3.73 gear and a 2800 converter. So I’m thinking if he did the research let’s go!!
We get it lit and break it in. To this day I remember how good the Pontiac sounded. It was crisp. Damn.
So he says I need smokes. Let’s run to the store.
Off we go. The store is about 4 blocks away. We pull into the parking lot like normal and next thing you know, we are heading to the front window.
My dad is flipping his lid because my uncle isn’t stopping and we are about to jump the curb.
He has both hands on the wheel, both feet on the brakes, my dad is telling him get this MF’r stopped before we run through the store and I’m just in the back seat waiting for the crash.
Somehow he just bumped the building and got it stopped.
My dad says “hey, you smoke some dope before we left”? My uncle says nope, it will not stop. Not wanting to be left out, I say doesn’t this piece of **** have an emergency brake??
Everyone’s yelling, the store clerk is bitching at us, customers are running around jacking off at the mouth.
We all get out of the car and tell them all to STFU and move on.
The good thing is we didn’t do any damage to the car or the 7-11. No one got hurt. My uncle got his cancer sticks and we head back to his place, knowing the brakes were not working.
The cancer sticks are what killed his dumb *** BTW. If you read this and you are still smoking that **** QUIT NOW. People die too soon with out using that **** and help the grim reaper.
We got a vacuum gauge on it and it had 7-8 inches. We laughed and said we’re lucky it stopped at all.
We pulled it back apart, got that cam out and the next day he went down and bought a 270 Isky hydraulic.
It was much better and the car was surprisingly fast. I think he finally got that pig to run a 12.98 or something.
He sold the car about 10 years later to a buddy. Still running the same bearings. He got lucky. I don’t have that kind of luck.
Moral of the story?
Don’t be cocky when it comes to drag racing. You can lose your ***, your pride and your money in the blink of an eye.
Think it through when buying parts. If my uncle had manual brakes that 300 cam would beat the brakes off the 270. It’s more important to stop than go. He got lucky we didn’t end up in the walk in cooler of the 7-11. Or hurt or kill someone. Pay attention.
Don’t rely on luck. Like I said, he could have hurt some people and wrecked the car and the building. He got LUCKY.
He also got LUCKY on the cam bearings. I ran into the guy who bought the car from my uncle a few years later at the bar. He was a local dope dealer.
So I told him the story and he wanted to kick my *** for telling him and my uncles *** for not telling him. A few hours and several drinks later he saw the humor in it.
He did stop in and ***** my uncle out though. I figured he deserved that lol.