10 replies to this topic

[Bruiser]

As much as I love to piss and moan like we all do about how crappy service can be these days,
I believe when you receive good service the word should be spread just as much.

I put a fairly big custom crow cam in my engine around March ‘23 and spent a fun year and a bit tuning and getting to know my new engine combo. It’s a fair whack of money for cam lifters and springs.
Had to pull motor out due to massive rear main seal leak. Bearings needed doing as well, and a hone too.
Whole motor in bits.
Found that my lovely new cam had started to eat its lifters, and the wear marks on the cam itself looked iffy.
Needed advice, but couldn’t contact the builder who supplied it by phone, or even email. Too busy.
Had springs tested, and gathered up all other relevant info I could think of to be prepared,
and rang Crow direct myself, expecting to be told that the oil was wrong or I ran it in wrong, you know,
the usual “someone else to blame” shit a lot of places will give you
They put me straight through to Lindsay, the general manager who must handle these problems.

He gave me plenty of his time, and after a decent yak, we decided it was best if I sent the cam and lifters to him
for a looksee.

A few of those lifters were fairly pitted, one particularly badly, all inlet lobes - which had higher lift mostly, but some exhaust ones too. Cam was shiny right across the nose on all but 2 lobes. No lifters showed signs of not rotating, at least

When he contacted me, probably after 3 days after it arrived there, we had another good jabber
But the thing that really struck me was his open attitude regarding the cause.
We went through my run in procedure, the spring pressure, the mileage and use of the engine,
the excessive idling issue and finally, the oil used.
He’s a good guy
We didn’t bullshit each other, he said everything I did was right, but I couldn’t tell him with any certainty it hadn’t idled too long
Setting your tappets and tuning your carby can’t be too much, surely?
He didn’t try to blame his cam blank or lifter suppliers, or even imply I had screwed up at all.
Acknowledged the spring pressures I gave him were good, my running in procedure was fine, too.
He did suggest the oil I was using might be an issue, though.
Said he had seen a few failures of late with this oil, not enough to be absolute proof, just a bit of a pattern forming
No arrogant finger pointing blame here, either.
Enough to suggest I use something else, though.
Not my place to name the brand, I guess, it is his perogative to contact them to help solve the problem as much as I want to say

The cam itself only had a few thou of wear here and there by his checking, similar to what I had measured in the shed with my cheap digital calipers. Lifters were shagged, though.

In the end, he suggested we could give it a lick and go again with different oil. Sent me a quote for the regrind, lifters and a bottle of crow zinc additive
Said he would look after me, even though it may or may not have been or probably wasn’t but possibly may have been crow’s responsibility and…
Only quoted me $110 for the regrind

It’s grand to come across someone representing a company who looks after a customer In such a way these days
That’s bloody good and I would recommend dealing with those guys 110%
If he was here buy him beers till he fell over

[N/A-PWR]

Great lot of information there Bruce,

 Got to say, it is a breath of fresh air to have good people still around.

Cheers to getting the beast back up and running.

[claysummers]

Good result bruce. When I got the new cam for my 179 from Jonny Marshall he also supplied on request lifters, which he surfaced as well. Lifters seem to be fraught these days.


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[yel327]

I can second you on their service Bruce. I dropped in and bought some of their stainless roller rockers and they showed me a fair bit. They specced up a custom cam grind for me as well but that has to change now as I have changed direction with heads (were 58cc chamber  alloy SBC now 64cc chamber alloy Trickflow fuelies).

[lemonaro]

I can understand you don't want to name the oil brand that might have caused the problem but could you name the oil brand and type you will use  next time? Save someone else possibly having the same issue.

Glad you had a good outcome.

[N/A-PWR]

We know Zinc helps with protecting engine parts from wearing,

 but what happens when we have too much Zinc?

 

https://youtu.be/erxjPicpYyw

Edited by N/A-PWR, Yesterday, 02:30 PM.

[Bruiser]

Heh heh, not enough zinc, too much zinc
- phosphor, boron, moly
Detergents in oil working against zinc
What a minefield it all is for everyone involved, the oil makers,
the cam blank and lifter factories, the cam companies and poor us at
the end of the rope trying to wade through all the promises in the adverts

Lemonaro, I sure do want to let everyone know the brand of oil but I don’t
think Lindsay would appreciate being dropped in it too much
I can’t recall which he suggested to use, I figured next time we speak I would check then.
I am naturally a bit nervy about using the same grind and it happening again, so I plan to
follow every bit of his advice, use the crow additive and the whole bit.
Will shoot you a pm

[claysummers]

Did they say to bed in with soft/stock spring pressures Bruce?


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[Bruiser]

Yeah Clay, that’s the Crow idea of doing things, no different to anyone else in that way
Had mine measured some weeks ago. Chunky double springs 125 lb seat pressure
310lb @ .550” lift.
Ran it in with the inner removed, outer measured at 90lb seat on its own.
Drove it around for some time like that, keeping the revs below 3500ish was hard.
Lindsay approved of that number and method

I’ve since read up and seen many recommendations of that kind of seat pressure
-(even a bit more, actually) for running things in

[Bruiser]

Lemonaro
I will report back here with oil recommendations soon, they have shut down till jan 8th for chrissie
so I won’t know till then.
Need to give him the go ahead to do the cam then too, so plenty of time to get things sorted.
Seriously considering having lifter bores grooved as well
Really not keen to fork out bickies for a third time

[Rockoz]

Lemonaro
I will report back here with oil recommendations soon, they have shut down till jan 8th for chrissie
so I won’t know till then.
Need to give him the go ahead to do the cam then too, so plenty of time to get things sorted.
Seriously considering having lifter bores grooved as well
Really not keen to fork out bickies for a third time

 

 

Pretty sure it was an article I read about Bob Morris and the Ron Hodgson team A9Xs many years ago.

Amongst other mods to the engine, they ground a 10 thou flat on the lifters to allow better oil supply to the cam.

There was a slight reduction in oil pressure, but cam longevity was increased.

The cams back in those days were very prone to wear.

My mates garage has a heap of 253/308 cams that had been replaced when relatively new.

From memory, they were mostly on No7 lobes.

We came up with a theory back then that it had to do with low oil supply to the lobes.

Most of the engines with problems had seen a lot of idling.

 

Cheers

 

Rob