lifter compatibility

[APPLEGREENVW]

Has anyone used wizemann lifters, with CB performance camshafts?
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[modok]

Historical curiosity?
Looks a lot like a stock German lifter.
If it weighs 86-88 grams or so it surely is.
The OE lifters were hollow(that's why they are lighter), and have a pressed-in hard insert for the pushrod.
Some of them have a VW stamp on them some do not.


I'm not sure if this is really appropriate or not, but I discovered today that NC Cams (I referenced a post he made at CNCzone) was in fact Dennis John Novotny, of NC cams in Ann Arbor Michigan. He passed away in early 2009 at age 58. Many of the extremely informative posts he made at CNCzone.com were in fact made while he was undergoing medical treatment. I have been paying my respect by learning more about this man's incredible achievements in life. May he rest in peace.

[interex87]

Hey guys can you help me out what brand lifters do i have?
looked for some kind of marking on them but did not find any thing.

thank you.

[modok]

COOL! I'll look that up.....................Google.

Oh, I see in the construction business they also have "chipping hammers"
Maybe that's the ticket.
Haha, this stuff's not in the Goodson catalog!

[A Avina]

Modock there is a hammer size in between a air hammer and a jackhammer.It is called a rivet buster,the striking action is slower than an airhammer but has a lot more force.Thought you might want to know that.

[-Alex77-]

[modok]

Interesting........
The problem with chillcasting is the material lacks toughness because it does not get tempered.
Plain old tempering involves re-heating the part and keeping it at elevated temperatures (say 500F, WAG) for a time.
Could be Jake's Cryo. method helps by acting like tempering.
If any of you are crazy enough to put you cams in the oven you might want to check em' for runout afterward.

BTW-Try straightening a Cat 3406 crank, that little air hammer just isn't going to be adequate. Do they make something bigger than an air hammer but smaller than a Jackhammer? I could use one.

[Jake Raby]

[Bruce]

[earthquake]

Would cryogenic treatment of the cam and lifter help?

Earthquake
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[modok]

Well this stuff isn't rocket science, but it isn't easy either.
OE's have had embarrassing cam and lifter trouble too over the years. VW had trouble in the early days before they changed the cam and lifter setup to the "American style", or so I read anyway.
Biggest problem is it may take years to know if it works or not.
I mean I'm only one person, even if I drove for a living it might take 6months of driving to discover if an engine part is good enough to last 30,000 miles. Important thing is to keep records so if something breaks into a million pieces at least you can look up what it was. Cams and lifters are like piston rings, looking at them won't tell you much, measuring them is hard too. Only way to find out for sure is to run it!!

[ShadetreeVEE]

no your work wasnt in vain at all.

quite frankly this discussion has enlightened me allot on the subject whereas i was completely uneducated in the first place. im not a metallurgist, machinist, nor have the resources to personally make my own parts. but i just like to see myself as an informed enthusiast. and i like the fact that its recognized and known that there is an issue with the camshaft compositions on the market for our hobby. all im saying is that i have what i have at the moment, i know it will work, so i am going to run it...

now down the road? i would LOVE to special order a batch of blanks from CWC that are made from a better material. i.e. proferal-ADI-hardenable iron. and have them ground to spec.

[modok]

Does it involve a radius chisel and a hammer?

The guy that taught me how to straighten crankshafts told me: "no, no, no, you have to get ANGRY at it. Give it five blows on this side, and five blows on that side. Ok, NOW check it."
I still can't straighten really big cranks very well because I find it hard to be "angry enough".

CWC-I don't know if they are to blame at all, as they can probably make any material you order. So who places the order? I don't have a catalog for "Engine Power".

I don't deny the cams can be made to work, I am running one, it works.
But somewhere an engineer is rolling over in his grave saying "You fools, you have it backwards!! We tried chilled iron back in 1946, it will never wear in properly!! Was my work in vain?" But spirit world cannot post on this forum.
I thought it would be good to give history a voice with my phantom internet avatar.

[Jake Raby]

If you saw the "normal" procedure for straightening cams after they have been ground you'd have a heart attack!!!
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Raby Engine Development
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"I've never given anyone Hell, I just told them the truth and they thought it was Hell"

[ShadetreeVEE]

hey modok...thanks a ton for explaining everything and going so in depth on the research and specs of the cam materials. also thanks to jake, jimmy, jay stewart and the un-named cam guy as well. its greatly appreciated, and i quite like the fact that one of these endless threads of bickering about lifters and cams has finally yielded some viable information that actually shows what were running in our cars. 95% of the vw community out there just purchase product off the shelf and toss in in their cars... no questions asked. inherently this may be the cause of why we're running inferior materials on our motors. its what blind consumerism has dictated as acceptable for the vw community.


Given, as jake raby has stated, the cwc blanks themselves cant be of too horrible quality as lots and lots of us have been running the cams that are based off of such blanks for years without too many issues. it may not be the most ideal material (chilled iron over proferal or ADI) but it works somehow. and unfortunately, thats going to be the way it is until either the cam blank manufacturer, or a new one steps up to the plate and brings another, better cam material up to the plate at a comparable price.

i received the 110 cam i will be using in my motor today. a side by side comparison between it and an older used 100 cam i had on the shelf. a quick look revealed a few discrepancies between the two castings. as the older one is labeled quite boldly with the cwc EP logo, and was not cast in a pre-clearanced form for using stroker cranks. while the new 110 out of the box has the SC1 logo barely visible, and the casting itself is different with pre-clearancing for stroker crankshafts. though i know both of the castings are indeed manufactured by CWC, i wonder why there are the differences between the two castings and how recently the change was made. there might not be any huge differences between the material, or strength characteristics. but its always a thought to why a manufacturer changes something, if what they had seemed to work in the first place.

now i know we are all questioning the quality of the lifters, and cams, and whether or not the material composition is the wisest of choices. but i myself (and jake raby too) can, and will vouch that the cwc based cams do work. and fairly well. ive had two different motors ive come across where the engine was run out of oil, whether by a crappy fram filter blowing up or the drain plug being left un-tightened. main bearings fried, melted, and dowel pins ripped out of place, lifters pitted, and yet both cams (engle-100's) were completely fine. spec'd out perfect and one of them is in my current daily driver 1600 motor. so my plan of action as of right now is to go ahead and use the 110 ive been provided. im not really going to stress over the issue, as i have some faith in the cam material as of right now (given the composition hasn't changed ) . and though i agree we may have been given "the shaft" as modok explained, and i would prefer to have a cam made of better material. we at least have something thats usable and can stand up to some pretty heavy abuse.

[modok]

Well this is my planet, and this is your planet.
if you don't like getting the shaft then give it right back to em', or just chuck it towards the scrap bin.
We have the knowledge given to us by our ancestors, and the power of our minds.
Build in your imagination what you want to accomplish and then make it real. No need to be stuck with only one kind of camshaft.

[Jake Raby]

The VW CWC/ EP blanks are better than whats found in a Porsche M96 4 cam engine.. Those cams have been known to shear in half from normal street driving!
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Jake Raby
Raby Engine Development
www.rabyenginedevelopment.com
"I've never given anyone Hell, I just told them the truth and they thought it was Hell"

[modok]

I don't care what it's currently named. It's what the cam should be made out of, it's what they designed the engine to use.
If the cams are actually made of chilled iron well that's just stupid.
CWC's website says they specialize in making ADI, or Hardenable Iron, or Ductile iron or whatever you want to call it.
So WTF

[Jimmy111]

Just remember that ductile iron is not cast iron in the same way that steel is not cast Iron. They both start out as cast Iron but are refined into different materials.

[modok]

Thank you Jimmy for looking that up, now I know what it's called!
And it is indeed, the STUFF. This is from the Ductile Iron Society:

"Austempered Ductile Iron offers the design engineer abrasion resistance that is superior to competitive materials over a wide range of hardness. Generally, ADI will outwear competitive materials at a given hardness level. For example (from Figure 4.23) an ADI component at 30 to 40 Rc will wear comparably to a quenched and tempered steel component at nearly 60 Rc in an abrasive wear environment. This property, shown in Figures 4.23 and 4.24, allows the designer to select the combination of strength, ductility and abrasion resistance that will provide the best component performance in a particular application.

The superior abrasion resistance, and the low sensitivity of abrasion resistance to bulk hardness are related to the strain-induced transformation of stabilized austenite which occurs when the surface of an ADI component is subjected to deformation. The result of this transformation is a significant increase in surface hardness shown in Figure 4.25. This increase in surface hardness, and its relationship to microstructure, are responsible for the reduced sensitivity of abrasion resistance to hardness. As the bulk hardness of ADI is reduced by the austempering temperature, the amount of stabilized austenite increases (see Figure 4.26). This increase in austenite content increases the hardness increment produced by surface deformation. As a result, a Ductile Iron component austempered to produce a lower hardness displays an abrasion resistance greater than that predicted by its bulk hardness, provided that the abrasion mechanism involves sufficient deformation to transform the surface layers to martensite."


Thats a lot of words, but anyway this is the material that "wears in" and "work hardens" Somebody asked about break-in procedure, the break in procedures are for cams made of this stuff; ADI, but cams aren't made of this stuff. So forget about it. I haven't been doing any special procedure.

Now most of the info I found was for general grades of ADI, special alloys for cams probably allow hardness more like 50hrc, but I'm not positive, it could be that 40hrc would be adequate. The old cams were in the 30's From reading the above it looks like this stuff is both cheaper and probably better than steel, thats why they used it.