Who has NEVER had a cam or lifter go bad?

[polyjohn]

Wow, I thought it would be Zero in the GOOD cam list!
Big-block small-bock, race and street I've had many...

Never on start up but after few months and sometimes years.
You always know cos the power drops off.

Going over to roller on everything now, but that's another minefield too.
Still get failures 'I hear' but more expensive ones...

 

[Mackman]

Three Comp hydraulic flat tappet cams in the last 4 years, no problems.

 

[fourgearsavoy]

Built probably a dozen Purple Shaft engines back in the 80's without failure. One cam went to 3 different engines with new lifters each time. Had 3 Comp Cams in my Savoy, one hydraulic and 2 solids with no issues. Ran a Howards Solid flat tappet with no issues and sold it to another racer and it's still running 10's. Current cam is an Isky solid roller going on 2 seasons and about 1100 miles of street driving.
So I've been pretty lucky I guess but I have always went with the minimum spring pressure I could get away with.

Gus

 

[Kern Dog]

Maybe spring pressure is a strong contributing factor.

 

[nitro_rat]

The last lifter I remember loosing was in Dad’s ‘78 Cordoba with the 400 lean burn. Must have been 1989-ish. That’s me in the back seat.

We used to ride down to the neighborhood pool in the summertime with that lifter ticking. It earned the nickname “Ticka-Ticka.” Had to keep a towel in the seat to keep that fine Corinthian leather from burning the back of your legs!

One day a wrecker showed up and dragged poor old Ticka-Ticka to the wrecking yard. It was still pretty clean, maybe they fixed it. More than likely it got crushed…

 

[70bigblockdodge]

I've never lost one. About to do my biggest one ever. A Bullet solid flat tappet [email protected] and .580+ lift. Only breaking in on outer springs and I'm a firm believer in the messy moly paste lube. I have always thrown away that thick rear end looking oil, red, green, yellow/green. I know the lifter has to rotate to work, but feel that the moly paste gives it that weee little bit extra protection. Plus it will take months and months for that sticky crap to ooze off the love. The thick oil stuff seems like I would be hurrying to get it running in a few hours it takes for it to drop off the lobes/lifter face.

 

[vance.dykes]

i have never had a cam shaft go bad or ware a lobe off i was working as a mechanic back when Chevy had a year or 2 of bad cam shafts with unharden problems. but in all my years never had a problem with replacements wearing out a lobe or any problems.

 

[nitro_rat]

I think that there are a couple of important checks that drastically reduce the chance of having a failure.

1. Check that there is a crown on the bottom of any new lifter. I'm sure we've all heard the stories about them being flat out of the box in the past few years.

2. Check that the lifters spin freely in their bores. If the lifters can't rotate, they'll flatten a lobe weather they're crowned or not.

Maybe a 3rd item is not to buy budget basement Chinese lifters?

 

[polyjohn]

We stopped using Purples as they was the worst offenders!
Followed by Comp cams, but in reality they all seem to fail, in da end...

Crower roller is my go to now as Lunati have now gone too...

 

[nitro_rat]

We stopped using Purples as they was the worst offenders!
Followed by Comp cams, but in reality they all seem to fail, in da end...

Crower roller is my go to now as Lunati have now gone too...

I was a big fan of Lunati. Too bad they're gone.

 

[GTXDAN]

None for me either. Put together several race engines back in the 70s & 80s with no issues. Replaced several Ford truck engine cams in 351M and 400M engines that lost lobes. Had to be the cams back then because one 400M looked like it had the oil changed in it once in 40,000 mi, and one 351M looked pristine and had excellent service.
Just started my 440 in my 70 GTX on Wed. Bored .030, balanced, decked, heads milled, with Edelbrock performer plus cam and lifters with Comp cam lube and Lucas break in oil. Runs like a top.

 

[66fs]

This is a serious question.
Bad news goes everywhere but good news often hides in the shadows. I know that there are many of you that have never had a cam go flat so let's hear from you!
Before I went all Mopar, I had a few Chevys. I never had a cam go bad with them despite Chevrolet having a recall in the late 70s for that very thing.
In all of the Mopars that I've owned, none of the stock engines had a cam/lifter issue either. It was only after I stepped it up a bit and went for increased performance.
In 2006, I used a Comp Cam 285HL in my 440/493. It ran great, sounded great but lost a lobe within about a hundred miles. I used the assembly lube, I used Valvoline oil and I did the break in but the engine ran hot within the first 15 minutes so I had to shut it down to cool off. When I went to restart it, I got no spark. I kept replacing stuff until it finally ran, at that point I finished the break in. Summit Racing warrantied the cam and sent another.
The second cam from Comp was the same grind. It lasted a few months before the same thing happened again. I took the 292/509 I originally had in the engine and slipped it back in with new lifters. It held up fine. I pulled it a few years later when I tried the Lunati solid in an effort to stop the detonation.
In 2022, I lost the MP 528 solid after having it in the car for 8 years. Sometime in 2021, I switched oil to a synthetic with a high detergent. I was told that the oil itself was probably to blame.
Back in 2010, I lost an MP 292/508 in the 360 I built for the FrankenDuster....


By all accounts, I did everything right with that one. I still never figured out why it went bad.
I have other cars here with flat tappet cams but they show no signs of failing. The 360 in a Dart, the 440 in the Power Wagon, the 360 in a 72 Duster all are holding up fine.
I am not a trained mechanic but when I am trying to determine the cause of a problem, I look for a common theme.
The only cam failures I've seen have been in rebuilt engines aimed for higher performance. Higher performance often means non stock parts, stiffer valve springs and higher compression.
There has been all sorts of discussion over what causes these failures. Some blame the manufacturers for making crappy products. There have been tests to show that the hardness of the metal in the camshafts and lifters is no different but there have also been some that found too little taper on the bottoms of the lifters. Some blame the valvesprings for being too stiff, others blame the oil. There are engine builders now that refuse to install flat tappet cams because they don't want to risk a costly warranty return.
You may just default to the argument to switch to a roller cam and that is a solid argument, but.....
Why do so many flat tappet engines survive? I know of several guys that have not dealt with a cam failure. What are they doing right?
Are you one of them that has never personally lost a camshaft?

I've never had a cam or lifter failure. Too many engines to count. I don't run cheap cams or lifters and usually stay with MOPAR factory HP springs so the loads are around 240 lb to 270 lb open. I instantly start an engine and get it up to speed to break in the cam. I've always run Valvoline racing oil with plenty of zinc. I used to rebuild engines when I was younger, back in the 70's and 80's. The only failures I saw were Chevy. You could never find a Chevy lifter with any "crown" and the lobes were going away before 70,000 miles when the timing chain would fail and bend all the intake valves, exhaust valves, or both. I would run used MOPAR cams and lifters and could find enough crown on the used lifters from two or three engines to make a set to use.

 

[747mopar]

I had a set of new Comp lifters that wouldn't pump up but never wiped out a cam or lifter.

 

[Ceedawg]

If been pondering this since the gitgo. Maybe just maybe the cam is not in the proper place under that lifter?! Say the cam lobe edge, which pushes up the lifter, sits in center of lifter so it rotates dead center instead of out toward edge where it’s easier to rotate ?! Cam gear, block machining, or cam ground wrong? Say the cam is ground so lifter rides on the left side of cam, I would think the cam lobe (on driver side) should be more to front of engine.

 

[Kern Dog]

Doing some bonehead type thinking, I tried to find common denominators in the cams that have failed and the ones that survived.
Of the engines that I have had, only 2 of them had camshafts/lifters fail while I owned the car and engine.
I have a 360 in a 67 Dart that was re-ringed in around 2001-2002. The guy used some low dollar cam and lifter set but later build a better engine and sold this one to me. The cam had a failing lobe so when I got it in 2005, I swapped in a Mopar Performance 280/474. I never took the engine apart to clean out debris, I just swapped in the new cam and lifters. The springs are what came on the #308 heads when I pulled them from some wreck in the junkyard. I did do the proper 2000 rpm break in. For almost 20 years that engine has ran fine even on regular oil, nothing special.
In 2008-2009, I built another 360 for a Duster I had back then. I used a Mopar Performance 292/508 but did use the proper break in oil, lube on the cam and pre-oiled it. The cam lost 2 or 3 lobes within 400 miles so I pulled the engine to douche it out, then swapped in another '508 cam.
Two separate engines, the first one was built while not following rules that everyone suggests to do. (nowadays they do, 20 years ago most were as careless as I was) The engine is still going. The second 360 was built with new protocols in play yet it still had a failure. Why is that?
The 440/495 in my red Charger started out with a MP 292/509 in 2004. By 2006 I wanted to try another cam so I switched to a Comp Cams XE285HL, an Extreme Energy cam with .545 of lift. It went bad despite proper break in and the use of the Comp Cams pour in supplement. The second Comp Cams failed too, though the second one did last longer. Keep in mind, I did add the break in supplement during break in and with each oil change. I did not use dedicated "Hot Rod" type oil like this:

After the second cam failure, I went back to the MP '509 until a couple years later when I switched to the Lunati solid lifter along with Howards EDM lifters. The cam was too wild for me at the time but still in excellent condition. I switched to a MP solid, the popular '528. I ran the '528 with Valvoline VR-1 for many years since it seemed to work well with the Lunati cam.
I made the mistake of thinking that a new synthetic oil might be worth considering so I started using Redline oil...

Within a year, I lost several lobes on that '528 cam. The diagnosis? The Redline oil was high detergent and that detergent likely prevented the zinc in that oil from sticking to and protecting the cam and lifters. The Valvoline oil worked fine but my switch to the high detergent oil killed the cam. I didn't know about the detergent levels until after the failure.
I don't know why the cams failed in the past but the most recent one with the use of the Redline oil seems to be the most obvious.