New Cam's ordered ... have gone with Mechanical rather than Hydraulic (oem). Custom grind from Kellford Cams. Won't know the final spec's until finished but will be looking at around 10.5mm Lift @ the Valve and 238deg Duration @ 1mm Lift My current cam's are 9.3mm Lift and 219deg Duration @ 1mm Lift Will have adjustable gears on all 4 and will be dialled in exactly spec's.
Nothing wrong with hydro's ... the reason I have gone with solid lifters is I can get the Cam Spec's above with a 29mm base circle which means "drop in" fitment. With Hydraulic Lifters getting a decent Lobe profile with anything less than 32mm base circle is difficult AND you have to pull the heads to machine to give Lobe clearance. If you go less than 31.2mm base circle you run into Lifter pre-load issues. So, for me the Solid route was the way to go.
Stock manual cams have 248' total duration, the ones I am having done will have 238' @ 1mm lift with a total of 272'. Lifters will Hydraulic's converted to Solids or a Custom Adjustable Lifter, yet to be decided. Have not gone with the light weight and expensive Tomie option as I will not be pulling a zillion rpm's ... will be staying in 7 - 7.5k range.
Cheers, it wasn't a decision taken lightly ... I fully expect setting these cams up will a B---H, maybe no worse that pulling the engine, taking it apart then putting it all back together
Does Kellford regrind or do they offer new cast cores they make their cams from? Also they don't be chance utilize a reduced base circle on their profile design do they? Just curious because I am in the midst of doing a comparison article between Tomei/JUN/JWT and the JWT has on average a .030" reduced base circle from the Tomei & JUN variants.
They will regrind or make their own from new cores and /or billets. As far as the base circle goes, from my experience they will try and do what ever you want - in my case I didn't want to pull the engine down just to machine the heads for clearance, I wanted to be able to drop them in so we had to work with a 29mm base circle (which is what Tomie use for their Solid Lifter Cams https://www.tomeiusa.com/cam_spec/vg/vg30_270_1025_ad_e.pdf )
Shim's are adjusted with all clearances to within .001 inches - hopefully - Time to install the cams, but before that there was a little job that needed doing... tap a certain little hole and make a screw-in plug. Then loctite it in.