Spoke w/Crane cams today. He quoted me 1100.00 to custom build a mechanical roller out of tool steel stock. The price includes the material, the one time design/setup fee, rough machining the stock, cutting the distributor gear, rough grinding the cam, then heat treating, then finish grinding the cam.
I'm interested in the thing because I have a crossflow head going on mine, I'm using a kit built megasquirt w/o a good base fuel map to start from, and I don't want to worry about having to stop/start a fresh engine in the begging of a cam break in because of it. Additionally, I understand that the lack of zinc in engine oil nowadays is responsible for premature lobe failure on flat tappet camshafts.
The discussion I'm trying to start here involves the lifters for the thing. As we all know, in it's stock form, the block will not allow "linked" roller lifters to drop in. I was considering cutting 2" holes (6 of them) between, and directly above the lifter bores to create an access hole so that you could drop one lifter in w/ the link bar attached, and attach the other lifter to the link bar, and drop it in the other hole. Crane also said they could provide me w/ lifters that would allow me to do that, I just haven't looked at it hard enough to be sure it can even be done. I'm also concerned w/ block integrity after those access holes are cut.
What do you guys think?
I'm interested in the thing because I have a crossflow head going on mine, I'm using a kit built megasquirt w/o a good base fuel map to start from, and I don't want to worry about having to stop/start a fresh engine in the begging of a cam break in because of it. Additionally, I understand that the lack of zinc in engine oil nowadays is responsible for premature lobe failure on flat tappet camshafts.
The discussion I'm trying to start here involves the lifters for the thing. As we all know, in it's stock form, the block will not allow "linked" roller lifters to drop in. I was considering cutting 2" holes (6 of them) between, and directly above the lifter bores to create an access hole so that you could drop one lifter in w/ the link bar attached, and attach the other lifter to the link bar, and drop it in the other hole. Crane also said they could provide me w/ lifters that would allow me to do that, I just haven't looked at it hard enough to be sure it can even be done. I'm also concerned w/ block integrity after those access holes are cut.
What do you guys think?