so I finally get the car running after swapping the cam, goto fire it up but had my msd wired wrong so there was no power to my coil. a lot of cold cranking before i figured it out. bad on new cam?

get the sucker running and my lash is way too preloaded so it ran like complete crap so i backed my rockers off and started it again, got it running with 2 cylinders crossed, shut it down again and fixed that. got it running again but distributor keeps creeping its way to retarded timing had it running at 2000rpm for 5min before it was so retarded that things were rattling and it just died. im certain it was my screwed up timing since my headers were red hot?

on top of that i had the rad cap off so i wouldn't lodge any airbubbles in my coolant system, but at 2000 rpms it was frothing the coolant pretty good.. normal? so it spit a lot of coolant back outa the rad


ARRRGH i SUCK

anything wrong with this sporatic way of breaking in my hyd flat cam?

i'm going to wait until i can get someone over to tend to my motor as i keep it idling fast for cam break in. I never had this much grief before

 

Hey Jer,

Of course it is not desirable to have such a herky-jerky wear in run for the cam but it is what happened and that's that.

The most important thing now is to get that distributor clamped down and get the engine running from 2000 to 2400 rpm continuously for about half an hour. Then drain the oil and take it easy for about 500 miles.

Hopefully everything will turn out just right

 

I don't see anything all that bad for a weekend wrench with limited experience. Heck, I've been at this for 20 years worth of weekends and mine don't usually go perfect, either. There's always SOMETHING that gets forgotten, overlooked or flat-out done wrong.

The main thing is you didn't freak out. You solved ONE PROBLEM AT A TIME and you kept at it. Keep going and you'll get it running just fine. Then you can start TUNING it. That'll be fun becuase it's also a matter of figuring stuff out ONE PROBLEM AT A TIME.

If it makes you feel any better, you probably aren't hurting the engine at all. Lotsa people act like small block Chevys are make of peanut brittle or something- balanced on the knife-edge of destruction if proper break-in procedures aren't followed. Hogwash. I've have startups that were unmitigated disasters. Coolant leaking into the oil past a bad intake gasket, distibutors that were flaky right out of the box, forgetting to put ANY water in the radiator, forgetting to tighten the torque converter bolts, fires, floods, plagues of locusts. Once fixed, they all fired right up and ran long healthy lives.

The only one that will really stop you dead in your tracks is forgetting to put oil in the engine (fortunately I have never done that). That's a show stopper. Everything else they'll usually live through, none the worse for wear.

 

the saga continues

fired it up again and after a few min it started making a horrible rubbing noise, like a rocker rubbin on the valve cover or something. so i take the covers off and its clear i got some valves outa lash still but that rubbin noise bothered me. i took a look down at my timing cover and sure enough it was dented out. i took it off to find the cam gear bolts ready to fall out!

gotta lock tight those suckers or something? probably just forgot to tighten those too!

but i lock-tightened them anyway and now puttin the cover back on. lets hope it runs decent this time

 

Locktite works ok but they make a cam lock plate $8 that works real well.

Dont feel too bad about all the crap your going through. I spent all day swapping cleaning and painting parts on an engine (olds 307) got ready to drop her in before I left work only to find I left the dipstick tube off and have to pull the air tubes, exh manifold and heat sheild just to install the dipstick tube.

 

up and runnin!

fired it up and it missed horribly, so i re lashed again which helped a lot, but still had a occasional pop out the exhaust. checked my initial timing and it was at 30!

got that under control and now the engine runs very nice.

we'll have to see if all this trouble was worth it now..
time to test it out!

 

Good Luck, I feel a lot of havoc coming my way in my motor swap next weekend. Just gotta be patient and roll with the punches!! "Stick and Move, Mac, stick and move!!"--Doc; from Mike Tyson's Punch Out.

 

Can't wait to hear if it made much of a difference