2blue

New member here planning on doing a head & cam swap, and I'm looking for experiences of other members have had with what I call "off brand" components such as cams, heads, springs, valves, pushrods and rocker arms. First, there are the old established companies like Comp Cams, Crane, AFR, Dart, while it appears some of the "new" suppliers sell their "house brand" cams, springs, "chrome moly - hardened" pushrods. It's hard to tell whether a small supplier has a cam grinding machine and grinds cams to his specs. Where does he get the cam blanks? how good is the material and heat treatment? and how good is his quality control. The same goes for a valve spring, which is a heat treated component subject to high cyclic stresses whose failure would result in a major engine re-build. Just about all these valve train components need to be made correctly to prevent failure. I bet most valve springs are made by a spring manufacturer and sold under another name. If so, what are the quality control provisions? A couple weeks ago I saw a post that sounded like a cam made by F. had a very rough bearing.(Bad forging).
So, any good or bad experiences would help explain this situation and influence my purchases.

777

iTrader: (21)

Most 'small' companies sub out cams and springs. Like futral uses cammotion, and speedinc uses comp, etc...The main thing that I would say is "theirs" is the cylinder heads. Most will have a cnc machine and come up with their own port design.