Truth about roller cams.... BEFORE you make the switch......

DID YOU KNOW???

  • I didn't know, thanks!!!!

    Votes: 10 55.6%

  • this is common knowledge, catch up with the times 318WR!!

    Votes: 8 44.4%
  • Total voters
    18
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I got a Oregon regrind sitting in the garage. Now I'm skeered.
 
RAMM said:
Lunati doesn't know that their core is cast and that a stock gear works just fine then. In fact MOST roller cam cores for the LA/Magnum are cast NOT billet which means new/stock/used/million mile gears like the Melling IS72 work perfect. J.Rob
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Well I’m just going to pretend you are wrong and I needed to spend $400 Canadian on that thing...Hughes at least sent me not one but two of their stickers in the shipping box
 
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A lot of the problems associated with distributor gears are not as exaggerated on a MOPAR cam as with other brands. Notice how large the gear is compared with Chevy or Ford. Also the gear is properly indexed with the cam and the distributor shaft has a vertical floating connection with the gear.
 
mbaird said:
Hmmm... Nobody told my 440-6 solid roller / bronze geared Charger it wasnt supposed to go for 10 years of street / strip driving . Some of those years it was a daily driver .
And it was in a 70 440-6 Challenger before that !
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Years are not the same as miles. I hope yours lasts forever! Good Luck. I usually put somewhere around 300,000 miles of real street driving on my motors. Sometimes, 18 hours a day at 75 to 85 mph. Everyone I talked to said use the Crane special steel gear for that usage. The last thing I want is to worry about is changing or monitoring a distributor drive gear.
 
I probably put 20-30k on it in that time.

Between my Ram , Barracuda , Dart , Dual Sport and the motorhome I doubt I will put anywhere near 300k on all of them in the next 15 years
 
mbaird said:
I probably put 20-30k on it in that time.

Between my Ram , Barracuda , Dart , Dual Sport and the motorhome I doubt I will put anywhere near 300k on all of them in the next 15 years
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I figured they are overstating the problem, and remembering what a Ford and Chevy distributor drive gear look like, I don't blame them. Obviously yours are well maintained and I do hope they last forever.
 
67autocross said:
Lunatic cams recommend the coated steel gear the Hughes sells for my magnum roller with their cam... I won’t forget anytime soon as it cost me $400 Canadian by the time it was shipped to my door.
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Looking at the Lunati catalog, their hydraulic rollers don't require the hardened gear, but their solid rollers do. It is right in their PN footnotes. So which do you have ac67?
 
So far I've felt calling crane or comp or any one of those big corporate operations is no less than a joke.. sounds like some pimply face kid that drove his Honda to work and doesn't want to answer the phone is talking to you. I would call Oregon cam grinders and ask for Ken the owner and get a definitive answer... I'm sorry I only read the first four or five post on the first page and skip to the last page...
 
Last time I was at Oregon cam grinding picking up my cam from Ken I wanted to take some pictures and I forgot. The place was loaded with every kind of Cam you could think of some that were 6 ft tall when stood up on the ground. Shopping carts full of cams. these people know what they're talking about and they walk the walk... just be careful when you go there as one of the adjoining warehouses grows pot and you could damn near get a contact high from the smell in the air LOL...
 
Look what came in today......

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PRH said:
Buy a new roller cam, and a new hardened steel gear...... no worries.
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Buy a Magnum roller, magnum pump drive and have the roller reground......if it will give you the profile you want. Rollers used to be made of billet steel, needing a different drive gear material. Todays rollers in OEM apps are the same ol cast iron that the gears are made of. Compatability has been raised a few notches since the billet roller cams...
 
j par said:
So far I've felt calling crane or comp or any one of those big corporate operations is no less than a joke.. sounds like some pimply face kid that drove his Honda to work and doesn't want to answer the phone is talking to you. I would call Oregon cam grinders and ask for Ken the owner and get a definitive answer... I'm sorry I only read the first four or five post on the first page and skip to the last page...
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Comp Cam has one of the worst customer/Tech support that I have witnessed. I would not trust anything they said.
 
512Stroker said:
Comp Cam has one of the worst customer/Tech support that I have witnessed. I would not trust anything they said.
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Not to get sideways on cam debates, but I'm not a comp cam fan. Noisy valve trains, poor tech service, and they are a huge player in the cam game.
 
318willrun said:
Not to get sideways on cam debates, but I'm not a comp cam fan. Noisy valve trains, poor tech service, and they are a huge player in the cam game.
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^^But I got to be fair, many run them with great success...
 
nm9stheham said:
Looking at the Lunati catalog, their hydraulic rollers don't require the hardened gear, but their solid rollers do. It is right in their PN footnotes. So which do you have ac67?
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This is the lunatic cam I have and the gear is the Hughes HUG 621SB.... I went through this with all my local engine building friends as well as calling the cam manufacturer and in the end I figured that this cam gear combo would work...

C0B06F98-A077-4C8C-8BB9-E414EC4A7530.jpeg
 
It's an easy thing for a cam manufacturer to recommend the safest softer gear when they are not buying it.
The bigger the company, the more likely they will opt for making the safest option standard policy.
Smaller companies tend to retain more concern for the customer's bottom line.
 
Idaho said:
It's an easy thing for a cam manufacturer to recommend the safest softer gear when they are not buying it.
The bigger the company, the more likely they will opt for making the safest option standard policy.
Smaller companies tend to retain more concern for the customer's bottom line.
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Good Point
 
67autocross said:
This is the lunatic cam I have and the gear is the Hughes HUG 621SB.... I went through this with all my local engine building friends as well as calling the cam manufacturer and in the end I figured that this cam gear combo would work...
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FWIW..... PN 20200212...... hydraulic roller..... Per both their current catalog and the one I downloaded in 2015, that cam does not have the footnote for needing the different gear. Sounds like you got someone there who did not know the whole story. Or, perhaps the catalog is wrong. Catalogs can indeed be wrong, but I find 'tech support' humans on the phone are overall less reliable than the catalog info.

The only Lunati cams that show needing the harder gear is the 40xxxxxx series... the solid rollers. That footnote reads: "18. Requires distributor gear upgrade "
 
Other than the price ( which really doesn’t bother me an all ) I am sure that the cam and drive will work fine together... at the time the engine was going together I was told to run just about everything that they ever made these gears from the people I asked.
 
I just run 20w50 roller or flat tappet camshaft and gun it and run it! :thumbsup: Sometimes when I'm broke I'll mix in some atf.
 
I've learned a lot in the last week about roller cams. Starting with messing around with the van, then buying a roller for the 5.9 mag. Called and talked with Comp Cams, and Oregon cam grinders. Also, a lot of stories and ideas here on FABO. Piece of cake - once you know. I see more and more magnum engines finding their way in my classics. Not that I don't love the LA's, believe me I do!! But it's about what is easiest to get my hands on, and right now it's magnums hands down.
THanks to all that contributed. :)
 
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