What's up with Comp Cams ?
#283
You can blame the tuners for putting the aggressive lobes in cars without telling the customer he just got sold a ticking time bomb. Ask them for cam specs, and they just say it's proprietary and we can't share that. When it breaks it's always someone elses fault.
Here's one example of how a primadonna tuner acted. I did a really nice set of heads for a guy and put a name brand set of springs on them. The car makes great power on the dyno, and a few thousand miles later promptly breaks an intake spring and pops the head off the valve. Shortblock and one head is toast. He buys another stroker engine, I do another head, the tuner/cam seller says it was my fault because I didn't use the right brand of spring. So I said ok and use his brand and part number. Guess what? It breaks another intake spring and munches another shortblock. Tuner will not tell us what the lobes are. I say ok I'll just put it on the Cam Doctor and we'll see what it is. I get told I'm stealing his technology.
It turns out the intake lobe is one of those lobes you shouldn't run on the street and I have it reground. It makes 10 more rwhp, and it is still running, that was about 4 years ago. This guy was out two engines and two installs because one tuner wanted to make a bigger splash than everyone else. It's easy to go too far when it's someone elses money.
The thing about these crazy lobes is that they're ok while the springs are new. They'll dyno good at first, the customer is happy when he picks the car up, but after the springs take a *set* the engine starts valve floating and it's all downhill from there. Every tuner out there knows this.
As far as blaming Comp for these lobes?.....Jeeze...this is America. If you want to smoke, smoke..... get drunk, get drunk. Marry the wrong chick? Go for it. It's called freedom. A long time ago Comp did not put its most aggressive lobes in the catalog, now they do. One family of those lobes was their *Thousand Series* for drag racing. You had to know someone there to get them. You had to check and either shim or replace springs every pass. But they were worth 35 hp over their High RPM Intake series. They're not for everyone, but if you want to run at the front it was necessary.
It's the same thing with the LSK lobes. It's a racing lobe. It's designed for class racing where you have to run a hydraulic roller and you have a state of the art lightweight valvetrain. If you have a light titanium valve, a very stiff pushrod, and the right lifters and pushrods they will go faster than anything else in the book. But you have to stay on top of the maintenance. Put an LSK lobe in a street car and you're playing Russian Roulette with a semi-automatic. It's your car, your money, and you have the freedom to do it. If someone is not smart enough in this day and age to not put a racing lobe on a street car cam he needs to just buy a Toyota Prius and drive it.
As far as I'm concerned everyone that hotrods his daily driver should be running an HUC lobe...... buy the best set of heads you can get and let the heads do the job of filling the cylinder.
Last edited by Greg Good; 05-03-2013 at 09:24 PM.
#285
FormerVendor
iTrader: (3)
Redbird, this is directed at all of us, not just you. ;-) Your opinion seems to be shared by many end users.
You can blame the tuners for putting the aggressive lobes in cars without telling the customer he just got sold a ticking time bomb. Ask them for cam specs, and they just say it's proprietary and we can't share that. When it breaks it's always someone elses fault.
Here's one example of how a primadonna tuner acted. I did a really nice set of heads for a guy and put a name brand set of springs on them. The car makes great power on the dyno, and a few thousand miles later promptly breaks an intake spring and pops the head off the valve. Shortblock and one head is toast. He buys another stroker engine, I do another head, the tuner/cam seller says it was my fault because I didn't use the right brand of spring. So I said ok and use his brand and part number. Guess what? It breaks another intake spring and munches another shortblock. Tuner will not tell us what the lobes are. I say ok I'll just put it on the Cam Doctor and we'll see what it is. I get told I'm stealing his technology.
It turns out the intake lobe is one of those lobes you shouldn't run on the street and I have it reground. It makes 10 more rwhp, and it is still running, that was about 4 years ago. This guy was out two engines and two installs because one tuner wanted to make a bigger splash than everyone else. It's easy to go too far when it's someone elses money.
The thing about these crazy lobes is that they're ok while the springs are new. They'll dyno good at first, the customer is happy when he picks the car up, but after the springs take a *set* the engine starts valve floating and it's all downhill from there. Every tuner out there knows this.
As far as blaming Comp for these lobes?.....Jeeze...this is America. If you want to smoke, smoke..... get drunk, get drunk. Marry the wrong chick? Go for it. It's called freedom. A long time ago Comp did not put its most aggressive lobes in the catalog, now they do. One family of those lobes was their *Thousand Series* for drag racing. You had to know someone there to get them. You had to check and either shim or replace springs every pass. But they were worth 35 hp over their High RPM Intake series. They're not for everyone, but if you want to run at the front it was necessary.
It's the same thing with the LSK lobes. It's a racing lobe. It's designed for class racing where you have to run a hydraulic roller and you have a state of the art lightweight valvetrain. If you have a light titanium valve, a very stiff pushrod, and the right lifters and pushrods they will go faster than anything else in the book. But you have to stay on top of the maintenance. Put an LSK lobe in a street car and you're playing Russian Roulette with a semi-automatic. It's your car, your money, and you have the freedom to do it. If someone is not smart enough in this day and age to not put a racing lobe on a street car cam he needs to just buy a Toyota Prius and drive it.
As far as I'm concerned everyone that hotrods his daily driver should be running an HUC lobe...... buy the best set of heads you can get and let the heads do the job of filling the cylinder.
You can blame the tuners for putting the aggressive lobes in cars without telling the customer he just got sold a ticking time bomb. Ask them for cam specs, and they just say it's proprietary and we can't share that. When it breaks it's always someone elses fault.
Here's one example of how a primadonna tuner acted. I did a really nice set of heads for a guy and put a name brand set of springs on them. The car makes great power on the dyno, and a few thousand miles later promptly breaks an intake spring and pops the head off the valve. Shortblock and one head is toast. He buys another stroker engine, I do another head, the tuner/cam seller says it was my fault because I didn't use the right brand of spring. So I said ok and use his brand and part number. Guess what? It breaks another intake spring and munches another shortblock. Tuner will not tell us what the lobes are. I say ok I'll just put it on the Cam Doctor and we'll see what it is. I get told I'm stealing his technology.
It turns out the intake lobe is one of those lobes you shouldn't run on the street and I have it reground. It makes 10 more rwhp, and it is still running, that was about 4 years ago. This guy was out two engines and two installs because one tuner wanted to make a bigger splash than everyone else. It's easy to go too far when it's someone elses money.
The thing about these crazy lobes is that they're ok while the springs are new. They'll dyno good at first, the customer is happy when he picks the car up, but after the springs take a *set* the engine starts valve floating and it's all downhill from there. Every tuner out there knows this.
As far as blaming Comp for these lobes?.....Jeeze...this is America. If you want to smoke, smoke..... get drunk, get drunk. Marry the wrong chick? Go for it. It's called freedom. A long time ago Comp did not put its most aggressive lobes in the catalog, now they do. One family of those lobes was their *Thousand Series* for drag racing. You had to know someone there to get them. You had to check and either shim or replace springs every pass. But they were worth 35 hp over their High RPM Intake series. They're not for everyone, but if you want to run at the front it was necessary.
It's the same thing with the LSK lobes. It's a racing lobe. It's designed for class racing where you have to run a hydraulic roller and you have a state of the art lightweight valvetrain. If you have a light titanium valve, a very stiff pushrod, and the right lifters and pushrods they will go faster than anything else in the book. But you have to stay on top of the maintenance. Put an LSK lobe in a street car and you're playing Russian Roulette with a semi-automatic. It's your car, your money, and you have the freedom to do it. If someone is not smart enough in this day and age to not put a racing lobe on a street car cam he needs to just buy a Toyota Prius and drive it.
As far as I'm concerned everyone that hotrods his daily driver should be running an HUC lobe...... buy the best set of heads you can get and let the heads do the job of filling the cylinder.
To this day I have yet to spec a LSK or XE-R lobe. I know that those lobes will make great power, but the most aggressive hydraulic lobes I've ever specified in any of my cam grinds are LSL lobes. I know the LSL lobes are aggressive as well, but they seem to not have the acceleration rate of the LSK and XE-R lobes. This intake lobe paired with a nice non aggressive Extreme RPM high lift or LXL exhaust lobe works well IMO in controlling the issues talked about here.
Bullet also has some very nice mild controlled lobes that make great power as well. Very similar to the LXL and HUC lobes that Comp manufactures.
Last edited by Sales@Tick; 05-03-2013 at 10:34 PM.
#286
Super Hulk Smash
iTrader: (7)
Redbird, this is directed at all of us, not just you. ;-) Your opinion seems to be shared by many end users.
You can blame the tuners for putting the aggressive lobes in cars without telling the customer he just got sold a ticking time bomb. Ask them for cam specs, and they just say it's proprietary and we can't share that. When it breaks it's always someone elses fault.
Here's one example of how a primadonna tuner acted. I did a really nice set of heads for a guy and put a name brand set of springs on them. The car makes great power on the dyno, and a few thousand miles later promptly breaks an intake spring and pops the head off the valve. Shortblock and one head is toast. He buys another stroker engine, I do another head, the tuner/cam seller says it was my fault because I didn't use the right brand of spring. So I said ok and use his brand and part number. Guess what? It breaks another intake spring and munches another shortblock. Tuner will not tell us what the lobes are. I say ok I'll just put it on the Cam Doctor and we'll see what it is. I get told I'm stealing his technology.
It turns out the intake lobe is one of those lobes you shouldn't run on the street and I have it reground. It makes 10 more rwhp, and it is still running, that was about 4 years ago. This guy was out two engines and two installs because one tuner wanted to make a bigger splash than everyone else. It's easy to go too far when it's someone elses money.
The thing about these crazy lobes is that they're ok while the springs are new. They'll dyno good at first, the customer is happy when he picks the car up, but after the springs take a *set* the engine starts valve floating and it's all downhill from there. Every tuner out there knows this.
As far as blaming Comp for these lobes?.....Jeeze...this is America. If you want to smoke, smoke..... get drunk, get drunk. Marry the wrong chick? Go for it. It's called freedom. A long time ago Comp did not put its most aggressive lobes in the catalog, now they do. One family of those lobes was their *Thousand Series* for drag racing. You had to know someone there to get them. You had to check and either shim or replace springs every pass. But they were worth 35 hp over their High RPM Intake series. They're not for everyone, but if you want to run at the front it was necessary.
It's the same thing with the LSK lobes. It's a racing lobe. It's designed for class racing where you have to run a hydraulic roller and you have a state of the art lightweight valvetrain. If you have a light titanium valve, a very stiff pushrod, and the right lifters and pushrods they will go faster than anything else in the book. But you have to stay on top of the maintenance. Put an LSK lobe in a street car and you're playing Russian Roulette with a semi-automatic. It's your car, your money, and you have the freedom to do it. If someone is not smart enough in this day and age to not put a racing lobe on a street car cam he needs to just buy a Toyota Prius and drive it.
As far as I'm concerned everyone that hotrods his daily driver should be running an HUC lobe...... buy the best set of heads you can get and let the heads do the job of filling the cylinder.
You can blame the tuners for putting the aggressive lobes in cars without telling the customer he just got sold a ticking time bomb. Ask them for cam specs, and they just say it's proprietary and we can't share that. When it breaks it's always someone elses fault.
Here's one example of how a primadonna tuner acted. I did a really nice set of heads for a guy and put a name brand set of springs on them. The car makes great power on the dyno, and a few thousand miles later promptly breaks an intake spring and pops the head off the valve. Shortblock and one head is toast. He buys another stroker engine, I do another head, the tuner/cam seller says it was my fault because I didn't use the right brand of spring. So I said ok and use his brand and part number. Guess what? It breaks another intake spring and munches another shortblock. Tuner will not tell us what the lobes are. I say ok I'll just put it on the Cam Doctor and we'll see what it is. I get told I'm stealing his technology.
It turns out the intake lobe is one of those lobes you shouldn't run on the street and I have it reground. It makes 10 more rwhp, and it is still running, that was about 4 years ago. This guy was out two engines and two installs because one tuner wanted to make a bigger splash than everyone else. It's easy to go too far when it's someone elses money.
The thing about these crazy lobes is that they're ok while the springs are new. They'll dyno good at first, the customer is happy when he picks the car up, but after the springs take a *set* the engine starts valve floating and it's all downhill from there. Every tuner out there knows this.
As far as blaming Comp for these lobes?.....Jeeze...this is America. If you want to smoke, smoke..... get drunk, get drunk. Marry the wrong chick? Go for it. It's called freedom. A long time ago Comp did not put its most aggressive lobes in the catalog, now they do. One family of those lobes was their *Thousand Series* for drag racing. You had to know someone there to get them. You had to check and either shim or replace springs every pass. But they were worth 35 hp over their High RPM Intake series. They're not for everyone, but if you want to run at the front it was necessary.
It's the same thing with the LSK lobes. It's a racing lobe. It's designed for class racing where you have to run a hydraulic roller and you have a state of the art lightweight valvetrain. If you have a light titanium valve, a very stiff pushrod, and the right lifters and pushrods they will go faster than anything else in the book. But you have to stay on top of the maintenance. Put an LSK lobe in a street car and you're playing Russian Roulette with a semi-automatic. It's your car, your money, and you have the freedom to do it. If someone is not smart enough in this day and age to not put a racing lobe on a street car cam he needs to just buy a Toyota Prius and drive it.
As far as I'm concerned everyone that hotrods his daily driver should be running an HUC lobe...... buy the best set of heads you can get and let the heads do the job of filling the cylinder.
#287
#288
Martin, the XE-R lobes weren't all that bad in my book back when that's all we had. We have better now, but........
James and Sheila Day have a black SS Camaro that used to be her daily driver that doubled as her bracket race car. It was an HKE 408 with a set of my 5.3 ported heads, a Fast 90 and a Comp Cam with XE-R lobes. Biggest pushrods Erik could stuff in there of course. On pump gas with slicks and skinnies, through the mufflers, it ran 9.90's. It got shifted at 7000 or a little higher. Solid steel Rev valves. No hollow stems. She'd get off work on Friday, drive to the track, James would meet her there and she'd swap out her own wheel and tires and race. (James has a damn good wife IMO)
They put over 500 runs (and who knows how many street miles) on that engine with a set of Patriot Gold springs I set up at .025" from coil bind. It made power and never broke a valve train part. How far would it have with Tooley's spring package on it? Pretty damn far.
James and Sheila Day have a black SS Camaro that used to be her daily driver that doubled as her bracket race car. It was an HKE 408 with a set of my 5.3 ported heads, a Fast 90 and a Comp Cam with XE-R lobes. Biggest pushrods Erik could stuff in there of course. On pump gas with slicks and skinnies, through the mufflers, it ran 9.90's. It got shifted at 7000 or a little higher. Solid steel Rev valves. No hollow stems. She'd get off work on Friday, drive to the track, James would meet her there and she'd swap out her own wheel and tires and race. (James has a damn good wife IMO)
They put over 500 runs (and who knows how many street miles) on that engine with a set of Patriot Gold springs I set up at .025" from coil bind. It made power and never broke a valve train part. How far would it have with Tooley's spring package on it? Pretty damn far.
#289
I am planning to send my CAMs and some others to be tested. On your questions I should have all this together by the time I get the test results. The route I took was to send the engine out to a different quality engine builder to verify everything was correct on the install and they found no issues. I will update this as soon as I get more information.
#290
Since oils have been in this topic I was wondering about the joe gibbs ls30 oil they make now. Is this a good quality oil. I have been using mobile one 10-30 syn. with lucas break in lube added to up the zinc content and it has worked well for me so far but I just purchased a case of the Gibbs ls30 oil because its a little cheaper and already has the extra zinc in it. Anyone info on this would be appreciated if anyone has been using it.
#291
FormerVendor
iTrader: (13)
You can blame the tuners for putting the aggressive lobes in cars without telling the customer he just got sold a ticking time bomb. Ask them for cam specs, and they just say it's proprietary and we can't share that. When it breaks it's always someone elses fault.
Here's one example of how a primadonna tuner acted. I did a really nice set of heads for a guy and put a name brand set of springs on them. The car makes great power on the dyno, and a few thousand miles later promptly breaks an intake spring and pops the head off the valve. Shortblock and one head is toast. He buys another stroker engine, I do another head, the tuner/cam seller says it was my fault because I didn't use the right brand of spring. So I said ok and use his brand and part number. Guess what? It breaks another intake spring and munches another shortblock. Tuner will not tell us what the lobes are. I say ok I'll just put it on the Cam Doctor and we'll see what it is. I get told I'm stealing his technology.
It turns out the intake lobe is one of those lobes you shouldn't run on the street and I have it reground. It makes 10 more rwhp, and it is still running, that was about 4 years ago. This guy was out two engines and two installs because one tuner wanted to make a bigger splash than everyone else. It's easy to go too far when it's someone elses money.
The thing about these crazy lobes is that they're ok while the springs are new. They'll dyno good at first, the customer is happy when he picks the car up, but after the springs take a *set* the engine starts valve floating and it's all downhill from there. Every tuner out there knows this.
As far as blaming Comp for these lobes?.....Jeeze...this is America. If you want to smoke, smoke..... get drunk, get drunk. Marry the wrong chick? Go for it. It's called freedom. A long time ago Comp did not put its most aggressive lobes in the catalog, now they do. One family of those lobes was their *Thousand Series* for drag racing. You had to know someone there to get them. You had to check and either shim or replace springs every pass. But they were worth 35 hp over their High RPM Intake series. They're not for everyone, but if you want to run at the front it was necessary.
It's the same thing with the LSK lobes. It's a racing lobe. It's designed for class racing where you have to run a hydraulic roller and you have a state of the art lightweight valvetrain. If you have a light titanium valve, a very stiff pushrod, and the right lifters and pushrods they will go faster than anything else in the book. But you have to stay on top of the maintenance. Put an LSK lobe in a street car and you're playing Russian Roulette with a semi-automatic. It's your car, your money, and you have the freedom to do it. If someone is not smart enough in this day and age to not put a racing lobe on a street car cam he needs to just buy a Toyota Prius and drive it.
As far as I'm concerned everyone that hotrods his daily driver should be running an HUC lobe...... buy the best set of heads you can get and let the heads do the job of filling the cylinder.
Here's one example of how a primadonna tuner acted. I did a really nice set of heads for a guy and put a name brand set of springs on them. The car makes great power on the dyno, and a few thousand miles later promptly breaks an intake spring and pops the head off the valve. Shortblock and one head is toast. He buys another stroker engine, I do another head, the tuner/cam seller says it was my fault because I didn't use the right brand of spring. So I said ok and use his brand and part number. Guess what? It breaks another intake spring and munches another shortblock. Tuner will not tell us what the lobes are. I say ok I'll just put it on the Cam Doctor and we'll see what it is. I get told I'm stealing his technology.
It turns out the intake lobe is one of those lobes you shouldn't run on the street and I have it reground. It makes 10 more rwhp, and it is still running, that was about 4 years ago. This guy was out two engines and two installs because one tuner wanted to make a bigger splash than everyone else. It's easy to go too far when it's someone elses money.
The thing about these crazy lobes is that they're ok while the springs are new. They'll dyno good at first, the customer is happy when he picks the car up, but after the springs take a *set* the engine starts valve floating and it's all downhill from there. Every tuner out there knows this.
As far as blaming Comp for these lobes?.....Jeeze...this is America. If you want to smoke, smoke..... get drunk, get drunk. Marry the wrong chick? Go for it. It's called freedom. A long time ago Comp did not put its most aggressive lobes in the catalog, now they do. One family of those lobes was their *Thousand Series* for drag racing. You had to know someone there to get them. You had to check and either shim or replace springs every pass. But they were worth 35 hp over their High RPM Intake series. They're not for everyone, but if you want to run at the front it was necessary.
It's the same thing with the LSK lobes. It's a racing lobe. It's designed for class racing where you have to run a hydraulic roller and you have a state of the art lightweight valvetrain. If you have a light titanium valve, a very stiff pushrod, and the right lifters and pushrods they will go faster than anything else in the book. But you have to stay on top of the maintenance. Put an LSK lobe in a street car and you're playing Russian Roulette with a semi-automatic. It's your car, your money, and you have the freedom to do it. If someone is not smart enough in this day and age to not put a racing lobe on a street car cam he needs to just buy a Toyota Prius and drive it.
As far as I'm concerned everyone that hotrods his daily driver should be running an HUC lobe...... buy the best set of heads you can get and let the heads do the job of filling the cylinder.
If you're a end user, you need to hold the shop who sold you the valve train setup accountable for failures. Every setup should be engineered to work and last, if the shop you're dealing with won't do that, then go elsewhere to spend your money. Once the pressure is on the install/tuner shop to sell a reliable package, you'll see the failures diminish rapidly.
#292
TECH Senior Member
iTrader: (39)
Please hit me up at briantooleyracing@gmail.com As long as other vendors can read my PM's on here, I have no interest in replying to them, I'm going to leave my inbox full. Thanks.
I emailed you a couple times this week. Checking to see if you got them. Thanks. Looking forward to hearing from you.
Jason
#293
This happened on one lobe, could be a lifter issue or the cam. Compcams ground and ls7 lifters. It looks to me the lifter wheel is stronger than the cam lobe(had a nice very deep scoring while the lifter wheel was pitted only). I changed the lifter trays with new ones just in case they are over bored but they looked fine to me.
#294
I know this kinda died but I just read it.
Not directed at anyone but I am continually amazed at what people will spend on an engine and then not research what is best for it or try to save money on oil. The most expensive oil change you could do would still cost less than a tank of gas. Best case you buy maybe ten tanks of gas for every oil change.
For those that asked about oil, here are a few I had tested. I'll let the experts in this thread like Brian, Martin, et al make the recommendations.
Left to right, all three oils are Summit Racing which is actually Spectro Motor Guard running on a mild Comp custom core hydrualic roller
10W-40 semi-synthetic -- 10W-40 conventional -- 10W-40 conventional
Virgin sample of Rotella T6 5W-40 SM rated
Lastly, a little note that goes in with every performance or race engine my builder puts together.
http://cmengines.com/AboutUs/tabid/72/Default.aspx
Not directed at anyone but I am continually amazed at what people will spend on an engine and then not research what is best for it or try to save money on oil. The most expensive oil change you could do would still cost less than a tank of gas. Best case you buy maybe ten tanks of gas for every oil change.
For those that asked about oil, here are a few I had tested. I'll let the experts in this thread like Brian, Martin, et al make the recommendations.
Left to right, all three oils are Summit Racing which is actually Spectro Motor Guard running on a mild Comp custom core hydrualic roller
10W-40 semi-synthetic -- 10W-40 conventional -- 10W-40 conventional
Virgin sample of Rotella T6 5W-40 SM rated
Lastly, a little note that goes in with every performance or race engine my builder puts together.
http://cmengines.com/AboutUs/tabid/72/Default.aspx
#296
FormerVendor
iTrader: (3)
Because the oil manufacturers don't want you to think that they are selling you an inferior product, one that may not be adequate or one that could potentially cause you to harm parts down the road.
Oil is a cut throat business. We see it on our TV screens all the time. It's an industry fueled by greed and profit margins. Plain and simple. We as hot rodders need to look out for the best interest of our engines ourselves and not depend on someone else telling them, "every thing will be OK."
Research the companies that you're buying your parts from guys. Research the products you're buying. Research the research you're reading about the parts you're buying and about the companies you're buying it from!
As a hot rodder, you are responsible for your motor no matter who built it, what parts are in it or any other aspect that involves your engine. Keyword there being the word "y-o-u-r".
Oil is a cut throat business. We see it on our TV screens all the time. It's an industry fueled by greed and profit margins. Plain and simple. We as hot rodders need to look out for the best interest of our engines ourselves and not depend on someone else telling them, "every thing will be OK."
Research the companies that you're buying your parts from guys. Research the products you're buying. Research the research you're reading about the parts you're buying and about the companies you're buying it from!
As a hot rodder, you are responsible for your motor no matter who built it, what parts are in it or any other aspect that involves your engine. Keyword there being the word "y-o-u-r".
#298
TECH Fanatic
#299
TECH Senior Member
iTrader: (39)
When someone is trying to research and find factual information and find this thread where reputable people are on complete opposite sides of the fence on one topic.
I am a skeptical person by nature. If you look at who is saying Comp is ok are companies that sell Comp cams and the people that don't are the ones who don't anymore. IMO I wouldn't expect a company that sells Comp Cams to get on here and say they are junk. It's just not going to happen.
To put all the pressure on the average joe IMO a cop out unless I completely misread your post.
#300
TECH Apprentice
iTrader: (16)
I thought they were still using group 4 base stocks, or true synthetics. I believe a few other synthetics switched to group 3 bases. The fact that companies cannot simply state whether the base is group 3/4 seems questionable. That is not giving any information on their specific formulae.