Thank you very much Roger for information Roger! It is very useful and I appreciate very much that you took the time to get it back to me.

I purchased a direct connection p4120243 (duration 244, lift 436) and at this point it is installed ( I have a machine shop doing the work), and in preliminary test there is no oil getting to the top. The machinist suspects there is no hole in the journal, he does not remember seeing one, apparently he had tossed the original camshft before opening and looking at the new p4120243, or else he would have known right then about the problem. Well that's water under the bridge. today the engine will be pulled off the car and taken to the machine shop where the machinist will pull the cam.

If there is a hole in the journal, then he'll need to troubleshoot the rest of the rebuild job that he did to find what the problem is.

If there is no hole in the journal, there are several options.

1. the machinist can drill one in it, but he would needs specs for the hole. He could take measurements off a stock cam and use these for specs. He is reluctant to do this and prefers the following option
2. we send it back to the people (Summit Racing) that sold me the cam and ask them to either send me another one with a hole in it as should be, or drill the hole there. I don't think this is feasible because (a) I do believe remembering the sales agent telling me it was the last p4120243 they had in stock, and (b) I don't know that Summit Racing has machinist capability to drill a proper hole (they might, I need investigate)
3. install a stock cam instead. I am very loathe todo this, it would be like giving up on what I originally wanted, and a waste of all the extra effort & money invested to this point in that quest.

Well, thanks again Roger! if you see this and can get back to me with more comment, that would be very much appreciated

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jack kumer

We ran into a problem with the MP cams from Mancini. It had oil holes in it but they were drilled incorrectly(wrong angle). You could not get them to line up with the block to oil the rockers. It seems the cam blank was drilled wrong.

We took the old bearing and lined it up so that we knew where the holes should be and then marked the cam and used a drill press and drilled into the passage at the current angle. Bingo oil to the rockers. I will bet you find this to be your problem. The holes are there but were drilled at the proper locations and you will not be a ble to get both holes to line up with the bearing at the same time. An easier fix might be to use a full grooved bearing in the back just like the front bearing.

Take an old bearing and check any MP cam before you install it. Seymour had a write-up about this in the last newsletter and even had a handy cut-out to check the cam with. Good luck and let us know what your machinist discovers.
Hope this helps.

Tom

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Nitrous cars are like old men on Viagra. Once the bottle is empty they are useless.
FJD

Thanks again Tom, I'll keep in touch, cam not out yet.

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jack kumer

Be sure that the rear cam bearing is install correctly, it only goes in 1 of 2 ways.
Tom has the good fix but you can also groove the cam journal or bearing a short distance to make the needed connection.
Also be sure the holes meet, sometimes they never connect! (drilled from two sides)
Here is how the holes should be spaced.
DD

this picture is best info yet, and having seen it I'm now not sure the cam I bought is in fact defective. I have bought another set of bearings and we'll try to fit the bearing on to my cams journal to see if the holes line up with the bearing holes, if not then the cam is defective. I'm going to print your picture and leave it off at Jeff Zinolas machine shop @ 140 So Whisman road, where right now he has the cam out and is puzzling over whether the journal hole drillings in it are defective. I ordered a set of bearings to be delivered to his shop on thursday so he can slip the bearing on to the cam journal to test if the holes line up. this is more feasible than him pulling the bearing that is in the engine in order to perform that same test. I'm leaving tomorrow @ 5:00 AM on a vacation that has been planned for months (non-refundable air tickets purchased long ago), but I'll keep in touch with Jeff by phone. Swing by and talk to him if you have a chance and inclination. check out how he has setup the offset bushing in the cam sprocket. I want it to achieve an advance. Thanks again!!

FYI I'll repeat here what I had said in reply to my other message "just now pulled the DC p4120243 cam that I bought from Summit racing, and the hole is not straight through the journal, but looks like it is drilled in two places that are about 120 degrees apart on the journal and so would never line up with the two cam bearing holes. That's why we get no oil to the top. The cam must be defective. I'm going to contact DC to see about getting a replacement p4120243 with correct holes in the journal. Already was told by summit where I got it in 1st place that they could not get another for 2 to 4 weeks, and that's not acceptable."

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jack kumer

The difference between the correctly drilled cam and an incorrect one is very minor. Just looking at one cam it would be hard to tell. The best way would be to slip the bearing on and try and line the holes up. You will know immediately if the cam is drilled correctly or not.

We had two indentical MP cams both bought from Mancini about 1 year apart. One was correct and one was incorrect. The blank itself was drilled wrong when it was made. Good Luck.


Tom

_________________
Nitrous cars are like old men on Viagra. Once the bottle is empty they are useless.
FJD

Tom, is that the cam you put in the $10,000 motor??!!

Cecil

No the $10,000 motor is still on the engine stand at John Force Racing!

We actually put those cams in the last two PEP boys short blocks we ran.

Tom

_________________
Nitrous cars are like old men on Viagra. Once the bottle is empty they are useless.
FJD

FYI,
Today I stopped by the shop doing Jacks engine.
They already had the cam out and on the bench, one quick measurement and sure enough, the oil feed hole is mis-drilled, the holes are too close together by .300
The shop has cam bearings on order so they can gauge the needed rework, a short slot should fix it.
DD

Same problem we had.


Tom

_________________
Nitrous cars are like old men on Viagra. Once the bottle is empty they are useless.
FJD

As DD stated above, he took the time out of his day to stop by the machine shop (I was on vacation, non-refundable air ticket) and provide the machinist with the solution to the problem with this defective cam. I am VERY grateful to DD for making that effort! Otherwise we could have really been floundering with several ill defined options such as, (1) order another Mopar Direct Connection p4120243, it would take weeks to get it, and it might have the same problem, (2) give up and use a stock cam, NOT after all this! (3) groove the cam journal, The latter needed some expert advice to be done correctly, and DD was there to do it! Once again, that was a very generous gesture, and I again profoundly thank DD. I must add that there were many other slant six forum members who took time to provide expert advice. So far the benefit has been one way, to me. I'm very grateful and will make a donation to the web site to try and make some small pay back.

So, how has it turned out? Well, the shop responsible for engine R&R closed for vacation about the same time I went on vacation, with bottom line that I just picked it up the car this Friday, and have been doing some limited driving since, so far, so good.

My goal in using a slightly bigger cam, advanced by 4 degrees, was to retain low end torque, and maybe do a little better on the top end. Well on the one hand that effect did not jump out at me from these few miles I have driven to date, but conversely I don't see any obvious degradation either. Also, since the engine was damaged and getting progressively worse over the last few years it's not easy to remember what "good" with the stock cam really was. Certainly, up to a about 6 months back it was getting pretty spectacular around town mpg, maybe even the best I'd seen over its 28 year life.

My plan is to do some tuning adjustments, check out mpg around town in which I have documentation from the last few years, and take some fun road trips, and see how it works out for these. I also have some road trip mpg documentation. Once I've done this I'll report back. But I know it will be difficult to determine a real effect unless it is pretty dramatic. I know that from the wide variability I see in my records. The variability is associated with wind directions and driving speeds, state of tune, etc.

I should add some info though for those of you wondering if you would want to switch to a p4120243. This is my experience from a about 10 or more years back. Then I had a 64 valiant convertible with 225. And I had some fun fooling around with various cams, headers, etc for it. I never encountered any defective cam problems back then, as I have with this last p4120243. With that 64 Valiant it was possible to replace cam with engine in car. I experimented with several cams, and what I remember was that I liked the results that I got best with the p4120243. I did have it advanced some, can't remember exactly how much , but I think it was 4 degrees. I used it in a configuration with stock manifold. What I liked about it was that it seemed to give the best highway mpg. Unfortunately we made the mistake of selling that 64 valiant convertible,. I surely regret that.

I'll provide some future update as how it's working out,and thanks again to Forum members for their very excellent, and VERY MUCH APPRECIATED support.

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jack kumer

I finally got around to swapping my stock cam for the P4120243 cam. The MP cam does have the holes drilled in the rear cam journal, but the holes are closer together than the stock cam. Will this still work, or do the holes have to line up with the cam bearing holes???? I know that the stock cam flowed oil to the rockers, but I haven't had a chance to test this new cam yet. I'd rather fix it now, if it needs to be fixed, since I still have the timing cover, oil pump, etc off. I'm worried that returning it to the dealer will be a problem, since I bought it last year, but didn't install it until now. How hard would it be (if necessary) to groove the cam journal with a die grinder so that an oil passage exists each time the cam goes around?

Thanks for your help.
Shaun

Rereading the above post, it looks jack kumer did have the journal grooved. Do I really need a machine shop to do this? As long as I use the diagram above and compare with my stock cam, I should be OK, right?

So if cams from summit are bad/poorly produced, then who makes a good one that is a fairly straightforward install? I can R&R a camshaft and associated parts but I don't think I am up for drilling one that's funky from the start (since I haven't got a drillpress for starters).

If people have comments, PM me and I'll start a proper thread... JRC

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Summit just sells the parts; they don't make them. So, it probably doesn't matter where you get the cam from--it could be drilled wrong. I bought my cam a year or so ago from Earnhardt Dodge in Arizona, since they seemed to have the best prices.