Today at the local boneyard I cherry-picked a roller cam out of a 94 5.7 liter Caprice. This is a nice piece; completely CNC machined. One thing that throws me is that it has a distributor gear; even had a 'dummy" distributor under the intake...

Would this cam work in any roller equipped small block? I snagged it for eBait, but might hang on to it for future use. I can email a pic if so desired for examination.

 

It is just a stock cam so I dont see it being woth much. I think that they will work in any roller cam motor, but dont think it would be worth it because it is not made to make hp, but rather torque to move those large vehicles. The reason they have that "dummy distributer" is to drive the oil pump.

Ben

 

Good. The last one I had sold for north of $100- the guy was going to regring it to more aggresive profile.

 

Well, I dont know how much it would cost a to have it reground, but I doubt that to many people do it. Also, there are quite a few people that use the LT1 cam in 305's, but usually they use the one from the Alum headed cars which is a bit more agressive.

Ben

 

Personally, I would have used the cam as a prybar to remove the heads. They're a lot more valuable than the cam, and flow like most aftermarket heads with no port work. A little filling and drilling will get them ready to mount to an older ("forward cooling") small block.

 

They are most likely still there, worth pulling for eBait?

Naturally, this happens AFTER I do the engine work on my Camaro... Right now the suspension and brakes on the LeMans are clamoring for attention!

 

It's not a billet cam. It's cast iron, like every other stock one.

Of course there's a dist gear and a little "dummy distributor"; there has to be something to drive the oil pump.

Yes it will work in any factory-roller-equipped small block.

This is why I don't buy stuff off of e-bay very much.... people on there will buy anything, for too much.

One of the "good" LT1 cams, from a F or Y car, usually goes for around $50 among people with some sense. Nobody that knows what they're doing wants the Impala cams; they're pretty close to a rollerized copy of the old "929" cam {I bow down to and worship the porcelain deity Ralph now for a moment ...}, not a performance grind at all. And by the time you buy some junk factory cam, go to all the trouble of pulling it, and get it reground to some reasonable profile, you'll have nearly as much money in it as you would if you had just bought a decent cam in the first place.

But on e-bay, who knows; there's a fool born every minute, and they all think they're getting a deal.

 

Are the cast iron cams completely machined, including the spaces between the lobes? The only cam I have ever seen like this was a Mercury Marine unit out of a outdrived 305- sold it to a gentleman in Maryland who was VERY happy with it...

 

If you look closely at any later factory camshaft, you'll see a series of about 90 indexed cuts around the circumference. This is done to pre-form the blank and reduce time on the grinder. NC milling is a lot faster than grinding, and it's all about throughput.

 

That is an answer. I would have done it differently, but I do not know all the parameters that need to be satified..