$87.99 prime day deal

I picked up this little gem last week there are camshafts like this for sale all over the internet. All kinds of websites. They are everywhere. Saturated the market and believe it or not there is a market for $100 camshafts Don't get me wrong. I love camshafts. I love all camshafts I custom order camshafts but I also have expensive aftermarket camshafts with pitted lobes so I'm not against any camshaft if it thinks it wants to be a cool camshaft let's see what it can do

What's not all over the internet are how the advertised specs compare to the actual specs, though there is a lot of speculation misinformation I get looking at it out of the box it looks nice but They look like a little lazy lobes though there's obviously a shitload of overlap but $100 Cam should not have aggressive lobes right??

I live in St. Louis and I thought there were more knowledgeable people around here.

I spent the entire morning calling around to machine shops trying to find somebody that had a cam doctor that could take a look at this piece before I torpedo something with it

Anyways, long story. Let's get it short. I called all over the place. At least it dozen shops. Nobody has a cam doctor and less than half of those shops Even new how to or could charge you to degree a cam. The ones that could at least degree the cam and give me the 0.050" numbers thought it was funny because it would cost me more for them to degree it than I paid for the cam

One of you space Cadets has a cam doctor and the extra cash to order a pile of these things and figure out what they are .

 

Amazon also has degree wheels and dial indicators. Nothing stopping you from measuring and telling us the results.

 

^^^^^^^^^^Here ya go. Get after it and apprise us of your prize....

 

Great response. Very passive aggressive. Very technical. Thank you very much for your relevant wisdom and expertise. There's nothing stopping you from buying one of these cams and degreeing it yourself either. I live 15 minutes from worldwide technology raceway in East St. Louis and Google can't find me anyone within several hundred miles from here that even knows how to do it.

At least you took a dump on my thread so when somebody else posts in here with some actual friendly constructive input you'll be email notified or whatever Don't pretend you don't care.

 

get out of here, go away and don't come back without a picture of your hands inside a Gen 3 engine and a pile of boxes bags of engine parts from the vendors for a build thread Just get the f*** out of here nobody wants nothing from you. Go away. Just go the f*** away

 

You're welcome! LOL
If you're the master wrench you purport yourself to be, you should be able to handle everything gametech said to do to sleuth this mystery bumpstick out!
Man, just who pissed in your Wheaties this fine AM?? Lighten up, or it will be a longer, hotter week for you. As for me, I don't give a ****, given your positive cheery attitude....

 

Hard to believe a cam was ground and it didn't come with a cam card. Time is money and for someone to take the time to install the cam into a block and take the measurements will exceed the cost of a $100 cam.

 

FWIW - Not Surprising 😒

Cam Doctor? My opinion is only very serious professional motor sports shops or very serious cam guru's like Mike Jones, Mamo, and similar are going to have access to a cam doctor or the equivalent.

Back in the day, I was lucky enough to have exceptional friends who worked at a NASCAR engine building shop. They had access to a Cam Doctor at that shop. I think that's the level of serious engine building required for a shop to have a Cam Doctor or similar. It's an incredible tool for looking at cam lobes as well easy to compare specific details of given lobes etc.

A shop needs to go through enough cams regularly justify expenses of Cam Doctor vs time to check manually. Likewise, none of NASCAR shops I was familiar with would EVER install a part without evaluation of the part beforehand.

Nearly every Cam was off spec back in day typically ~1 degree. I would guess with today's standards a quality manufacturer is normally at least that accurate on spec most of the time. Of course, the cam can be made perfect but still end up in the wrong box. It's ideal to check but a lot of folks feel it's not worth the cost or effort.

My Comp Cams custom ground 224/224 .581/.581 on a 113 LSA actually checked IIRC as 224.8/224.8 .582/.580 on a 112 LSA. Typically a hair big and a hair narrower.

It probably would be too difficult with a little Electrical Engineering background to build a Cam Doctor like tool. Key would be an accurate rotary encoder.

Performancetrends - cam_test_stand

 

A quick search of Elgin's website states all their stuff is made in the US. Maybe they're lying, go ahead and check with them,
https://www.elginind.com/ls-engine-camshafts/
Bezos' doesn't care about the quality as long as he adds another billion or so during Prime days. Send it back........don't waste your time.

 

The thing is there's a million of these hundred-dollar cams out there and they are going to saturate their way into the hobby whether we like it or not. I purchased mine out of curiosity, I can still return it. I mentioned when I started the thread that of the few places I was able to reach locally that actually understood the purpose of, would, or could degree a camshaft that it would cost more in labor than I paid for the cam. I completely realize that, but that's exactly why I started this thread. My engine stand is bare at the moment or I would already have posted results. I was just hoping somebody else Maybe just one person was curious about these things, they've been selling them for years. Maybe some of the more high-tech vendors have already looked at them and don't want to share what they found. Mine came very very neatly packaged very much Like you get a new summit camshaft Only there's another bag to seal around that nice waxy paper stuff as I stated before, they are filling a hole in the market Whether we like it or not. It would be helpful to know the next time someone pick up a used engine with a completely blank unidentifiable camshaft in it whether it's this this,or that.

 

Cam docotrs are not a regular item even at high end race shops. Not be sound rash but its like being upset there isn't a Hilton in Antarctica.

Your best bet is to contact a smaller cam company and ship to them.

 

No, it's not surprising at all. You get what you pay for. Anyone who buys a new Chinesium cam for $87.99 without a cam card deserves the performance they get with no complaint department......

 

Exactly. Any cam out of the Won Hung Lo Precision Cam Emporium is luck of the draw. They grind 'em and sell 'em. Not a **** is given about precision specs. Get out the calipers, dial indicators, and other measuring tools and have at it...

 

I'm not here to debate the merits of saving money or saving paper. I simply want to know what the actual specs of these cams are as compared what they are advertised as there's no harm in finding that out, it seems to me like that would be a good opportunity for someone who's trying to sell their own cams with the right specs on the box to better showcase their products and tell us why exactly we shouldn't buy these.

A young kid starting out in this hobby looking for some cam chop could afford to buy HP tuner with the money he saved on this cam. Some of the comp stuff is now over $500 for just the stick!

The seller lists the specs for it 238/242 .595/.595 112 same as a trick flow or an Elgin however, most of us me included get the thing out of the box and are at least capable enough to find a bit less than .350" lobe lift so less than.595 at the valves.

Still the cheap cams seem to be higher quality than the cheap springs they're often sold with, I wouldn't touch those for anything however, looking at the lobes on this thing Even 918s are probably Overkill it would probably get away with LS6 springs just fine.

This is supposed to be a tech forum The only thing I ever whine about on here is the complete lack of it, and yes blackbird I've looked into what it would take to build a cam doctor at home, too much work for me unless I could build my own mail order business out of it or something

 

Are you planning on eventually running it in something or were you just curious for the cheap price?

 

I would never have this problem in the first place. I'm sure there's plenty of us out there shaking their heads at this one.

 

​​​​​All the above, I have tested 4 different cams alone mild to wild in one of my own home built engines so It would be fun to see how this one would compare to some of the stuff from more reputable manufacturers performance-wise.

I also haven't tuned anything in a bit and something like this with an obscene amount of overlap on a lazy lobe just seems like a fun thing to mess with listen to and look at on my computer screen. I don't plan on keeping the cam in there much longer after I tune it Anyway I'll get bored with it and I'll find something else I want to try.

It's not about the cost of anything or where it comes from. It's about the tech, it's about getting a performance product for one of our engines, ensuring it's of good enough quality for the task we require of it and then testing its performance against other products in a real world setting.

​​​​​It doesn't hurt me any to change the camshaft. I can do it in my driveway in a couple of hours without any help. It's no big deal if I don't like it, I'll take it back out and I've got my choice of two others besides this one that I haven't tried yet either.

​wouldn't anyone want to see the differences in the individual VE tables for some different cams within the same setup? Nobody ever shows engine dyno numbers below. 3K, but that's the most important part of the VE table to get right, That's probably something interesting to compare along with the advertise vs.actual cam specs anyway.

 

Agree totally. Engines are like computers; junk in, junk out. Only advantage, if you can call it that, is the engine will take itself apart, while a computer won't. I'm sorry the OP has had this problem. But internal engine components aren't a good place to cut corners. Theres a lot more to a cam than specs. Even if that cams specs are dead nuts what theyre supposed to be (whatever numbers they may be), how good are the engineers that designed the acceleration/deceleration ramps? Where did they gain their experience at designing lobes? Two cams can have virtually identical specs at .050" lift, but behave considerably different. How good is the steel that the core is made from? What steel is it? If the engine drops a valve in 15,000 miles, do you blame the valve manufacturer, or the cam grinder? I realize all cam grinders (and any company) have to start somewhere. When you buy from Isky, Comp, Cam Motion, Lunati, etc., you're paying money for labor, materials, and perhaps most important of all, their expertise and experience. I wish the OP luck. I hope he doesn't need it....

 

I see the specs you listed. As for lift, a "bit less than .350" lobe lift" nails nothing down. If this thing has .345" lobe lift, I'd never run LS6 springs in it. PAC or PSI, Comp, or Lunati would be my choice. I ran a 238/242 Comp grind in my LS7. Had .638"-.646" lift, due to the 1.8 rockers. It was on a 114° LSA, so not apples to apples. Engine made 617hp@6,300rpm @crank......

 

so you think if you measure that one you have in your hands, all the rest of the chinesium cams will be the same?