Gains from a custom Hydraulic Roller cam

[69Cobra428]

Hey all,

Just thought I would share a story with updating the 428CJ in my 1969 Fairlane (with a long back story)  .

About 22 years ago, I had the engine gone completely through by a reputable engine builder here in the Twin Cities. At the time, the internet wasn't very big so I just went with his knowledge. I ended up with a great running engine (although I never dyno'd it). Then about 10 years ago, I decided to put headers on my engine and after doing some research, I needed to find the correct heads. Since I was a member at the other FE forum, I was able to gather advice and figured out a plan. I didn't have a ton of miles on the old engine so I decided to keep the short block the same and went with a new top end. Using Jay Brown's knowledge, I bought Edelbrock heads, an Edelbrock RPM intake, FPP roller rockers and a Comp 294S cam and lifters. After assembly Jay dyno'd the engine for me and we ended up with 468hp and 486 ft/lbs of torque. It was nice to finally see some numbers on what my engine had. So everything went back together and I drove the car for a few years.

Then life got busy with kids.  I didn't drive the car as much as I wanted because it seemed like I was always going different directions. Then in last year, I decided to put and EFI system on the car to make it more driveable (it was always a pain to start after sitting for a few weeks). I bought and installed a Holley Sniper kit last spring and the car ran great!

As luck would have it, the night before I was supposed to do a 300 mile charity rally the Fairlane started acting up and finally wouldn't run. I thought it was issues with the EFI so I went thru some diagnosing with Holley and actually sent the whole unit back for testing. They found no issues so I had to dig deeper. A friend came over and we tried everything before finally pulling a valve cover and finding a couple of broken rocker arms. Pulled the other cover to find 3 more broken rockers  .

Did a leak down and found that two cylinders were down compared to the rest (and I could hear air coming from the intake port on one cylinder). Yanked the engine to pull the heads off and found no damage to the pistons or any noticeable damage to the heads/valves. Brought the heads into R&R Performance for an assessment and discussed my options with Jay. He mentioned going with a hydraulic roller cam this time around. So I made a phone call to Brent Lykins who then did some calculations and came up with a good custom roller cam for me. One that gave me some HP and torque but still provided vacuum for my power brakes.

Got the heads back from the shop (they installed new springs to match the cam), the roller cam, Morel lifters, custom pushrods, etc and put everything back together. At Brent's suggestion, I also went with stock non-adjustable rocker arms because there's less weight moving in the valve train compared to roller rockers. Fortunately I had a set sitting in my cabinet and it save me about $400 

I decided to dyno the engine again and Ron at R&R did some great tuning with it. We were able to get 495Hp and 520ft/lbs of torque out of it (this was using the 750cfm dyno carb). Ron thought that 500hp was attainable with different jetting and a distributor re-curve but needless to say, I was very pleased!

Those are some pretty big gains for basically just a cam and lifter swap  . The gains were about 27hp and 35 ft/lbs of torque.

I have since gotten everything back into the car and have finally had a chance to put some miles on it and I'm very happy! The Holley Sniper EFI makes starting simple and the car runs great!

I'd like to thank Brent Lykins and Jay Brown for everything! Lots of texts and phone calls back and forth. These guys are what make the FE community great and I owe it all to them!

Thanks!
Doug Swanson

[Falcon67]

Good testament to keeping the pros in your build loop.  I have a new custom solid roller in the 393C from Brent, will see how that runs here shortly. 

[jayb]

Doug, thanks for the kind words and of course I was happy to help.  I've been meaning to ask you about the cam specs; can you post those, or are they a secret? 

[chilly460]

Good to hear, have a solid flat tappet from Brent for my upcoming 416 build

[blykins]

In the famous words of Hannibal from the A-team......."I love it when a plan comes together."  Doug was very easy to work with and didn't bat an eyelash when I asked him to measure every single pushrod length so that we could order custom pushrods for the non-adjustable rockers.   

The previous iteration of Doug's engine with the 294S peaked the horsepower at 5800.  The new camshaft made more horsepower and torque at an ever-so-slightly lower 5700.  Didn't have to turn more revs to do it, which is always in the favor of streetability.

New camshaft was 296/299 advertised, 240/243 @ .050", 111 LSA, on a 105 ICL.  .565/.580" lift. 

[69Cobra428]

Doug, thanks for the kind words and of course I was happy to help.  I've been meaning to ask you about the cam specs; can you post those, or are they a secret? 

No secrets from me. I just didn’t have them in front of me 

[69Cobra428]

Thanks for posting those number, Brent!

[Rory428]

Not trying to throw a wet towel on the story, but when you first installed the Edelbrock heads, were they bolted on "out of the box", or did they have a good valve job done first? I have heard varying results of the quality of Edelbrocks assembly line valve and seat work. Considering that you didn`t put all that much use on the heads before they had issues, just curious. What did the engins shop find wrong with your heads, and what did they have to do to fix them? Also, was the same dyno used for the original and latest numbers? Just wondering if the headwork was much of a contributing factor to the power increase. Have you ran the car down the track before? Be interested to see any actual performance changes between the carb setup, the EFI conversion, and the new cam and headwork. Kinda suprised that you had several broken FPP roller rocker arms, did you find a cause? I know several people who have used those rockers in race engines with much larger solid flat tappet and solid roller cams that had not had breakage issues. Tight valve guides maybe?

[69Cobra428]

Not trying to throw a wet towel on the story, but when you first installed the Edelbrock heads, were they bolted on "out of the box", or did they have a good valve job done first? I have heard varying results of the quality of Edelbrocks assembly line valve and seat work. Considering that you didn`t put all that much use on the heads before they had issues, just curious. What did the engins shop find wrong with your heads, and what did they have to do to fix them? Also, was the same dyno used for the original and latest numbers? Just wondering if the headwork was much of a contributing factor to the power increase. Have you ran the car down the track before? Be interested to see any actual performance changes between the carb setup, the EFI conversion, and the new cam and headwork. Kinda suprised that you had several broken FPP roller rocker arms, did you find a cause? I know several people who have used those rockers in race engines with much larger solid flat tappet and solid roller cams that had not had breakage issues. Tight valve guides maybe?

I bought the heads bare from Keith Craft who went thru them and installed bigger valves and matched the springs to my cam. The machine shop found that the springs Craft used were actually too stiff for the cam. They mentioned that some of the valves weren’t at the same height but couldn’t really pinpoint anything else wrong. They went thru the heads and I think they just installed new springs to match the new cam.

The first dyno session was at Jay’s while the second was at R&R. At Jay’s we used my CJ carb and his 750 (I think). His carb made about 7hp more than mine. This time I tried my CJ carb but it was leaking too much fuel at the float adjuster to use it so we used the 750 dyno carb. I wanted to use the EFI but I didn’t want to cut the harness out of my car

[Cyclone03]

Count me as another happy Lykins Motorsport cam customer.
Brent speced me a cam for my 433in FE a little smaller here and there compared to Dougs about 10deg less duration near the same lift  on a 112lsa.Stock rockers with custom pushrods,Hyd rollers too. Runs great,quite and smooth.