Cam oiling vs. flat cams

[Chevy454]

I got an email from Tedford this afternoon, and guessing by his email he has been following the same thread over at Team Chevelle that I have, concerning flat cams and BBC's.

Here are a couple of links to products designed to help fight a flat cam in a BBC, as listed on Team Chevelle:

http://www.off-road.com/chevy/reviews/bbc_oiler/

http://www.competitionproducts.com/page57.html

It looks to me like the lifters would be the simpler way to go, but it seems that actually getting oil TO the camshaft/lifters is the problem. Thoughts?

[bbdon]

I personally do not think that either one of those solutions is needed on a big block with a stock cam. Just pour some eos on the shaft before bolting on the manifold, and pre oil before starting for the first time, and you should be OK. I have done a few, and Ive never had a failure. If you run a cam with steeper ramps and heavier springs, maybe then you will see a problem. From setting the valves on a BB while it was running, I can say from experience that they seem to pump plenty of oil to the top end, so I don't think that is the problem. You need goggles or you will get lots in the eye. If you are running a modified engine, maybe you want a roller cam anyway. With a roller cam set up, you will probably want to actually restrict some of the oil flow to the top end.

[Keith Tedford]

The problem is not top end oiling but rather the amount of splash that the cam gets. With the standard springs things are ok. The L78 and L72 motors weren't running enough spring pressure for the rpm they were capable of but the cam would last a long time. Not enough spring pressure is probably the number one reason that so many of them dropped valves and ruined the block and heads. At the least this setup would be cheap insurance and at the worst it can't hurt anything when using heavier springs.

[JoeC]

You may also want to look into the composite lifters. They have been used in exotic racing engines but are now being produced at lower cost. The composite lifters are very light weight and very low friction. There is a company making them for BB Chevy but I don't recall the name.