Cam woes. (Mid-Week light reading)

[PbFut]

I will be the first to admit that I know just enough on this subject to be extremely dangerous to my wallet. I tend to be one of those guys that can’t leave well enough alone. The old saying of “since I’m all ready this far”…. You get the idea. So beginning this past June, I pulled out the AC “engine bay components to convert and refresh. It was full of rodent nest and you name it in the ducts. So I cleaned it all up and got the blower and vent flappers all working nicely. Start on the engine bay AC components and what do you know. One thing leads to another and the whole damn front end ends up disassembled, fire wall forward with only frame rails left. Lots of time spent cleaning and painting. New suspension except springs. It all looks really nice now. With the engine out, why not inspect the internals given I have no idea of history. Cylinder walls were in remarkably good shape with well defined honing still very visible.. No bottom end noise prior to disassembly and I really didn’t want to pull the caps for a plastiguage test. Not the best power overall. So what the heck, lets put a reasonable upper end on it, leave the bottom well enough alone, and see what happens. Modest Edelbrock heads and intake were acquired. Already had a nice Edelbrock AVS2 carb that I really like and a HEI setup. Given I was this far with the upper end, why not drop a cam in to give it a little lope just for some attention in the parking lot. Well, that’s when the engine gods woke up and said lets screw with Dan. Being keenly aware of the very common error of over camming low compression engines, I proceeded to do exactly that. The lope sounded like a 1960s pro gasser but every other feature was not to my liking. No big deal. In the total scheme of things a bump stick is pretty cheap and being retired, time is cheap. At least the break in was accomplished with no issues giving me confidence I could still assemble an engine without damage at startup. I was successful once, I can duplicate, right? Back to Comp Cams I go for a little better choice on the grind. I also got some input on this board a while back on cam selection. New cam arrives and I pull things apart and re-install. Initial startup was even quicker this time as I had good setting marks work from. Run-in seemed to go well. Idle was less lopey but still noticeable. Throttle was snappy. I’m thinking I like this. After a successful run-in, I finish up the remaining items like exhaust and such. After a couple days, lets run it up and down the road and see how it feels. Humm…is that lifter tick I hear? Humm, seems the power is less than before. Maybe I didn’t adjust the rockers correctly. Please don’t let this be a cam run-in fail. Yup the engine God’s were apparently not happy with all my unnecessary fiddling and came down hard on me. So maybe the flat tappet route was not the best plan. I am just too willing to over test my shade tree mechanical abilities.
I’ve heard golf is a frustrating hobby sport. Whomever said that never tried motor sports.
Maybe I’ll try a roller.
All in good fun, at my expense. Happy hour here on the west coast is starting early today.
Thanks for reading and letting me release a bit of self-inflicted frustration.