Need Expert's Answer About This B16B Cams ASAP
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From: Bangkok, BKK, Thailand
Need Expert's Answer About This B16B Cams ASAP
It's not by accident that I've sent this pair of cam to be polished like what you see in the pictures above. However, some nice folks, after having see these pix on HondaTech.com, told me that this pair of cam is no longer useable because I've polished out all the nitride coating!!
If that's the case, why do some peeps micropolished and balanced their crankshaft? Isn't that the same purpose here I could do with the cams that I have?
Polished to make more smooth!?!
Can someone please help me? I'm about to start building a new engine tomorrow and I need to have a straight answer about this cam's usuability because I'd have to find another pair to be used asap!!
Thank you very much for your time!
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Re: (Chris Tune)
your polished cams are fine. People polish cams for the same reasons as they do cranks. IPS cams have there cam journal and lobes micro-polished to reduce wear and friction. here exactly what they said:
Q: What is so good about your quality? I can copy your lift and duration and have my stock cams reground for less money. Why are your billets better than others and why can you say yours are less likely to break?
A: As we stated previously, there is much more to cam design than lift and duration. If you want to try, well you are on your own. There are many subtleties with the profile and type of grinding we use. Regrinds don’t work well on rocker arm motors like the K series. By grinding on the cams base circle to get more lift and duration from a stock lobe, you really upset the rocker arm geometry which wrecks havoc with the cam spec numbers as well as potentially creating a lot of noise and wear issues. You get what you pay for.
IPS cams are ground on new half chilled iron billets. As far as we know, other quality K-series cams on the market are ground on fully chilled billets. A chill is a metal heat sink placed in the sand mold that the billets are made in. The chill speeds the hardening of the molten iron and imparts metallurgical changes that make the iron harder and wear resistant right where it needs it most, on the surface of lobe. In between the lobes cools slower and stays tough and ductile resisting breaking. Normally this is a great thing. Unfortunately on a VTEC engine there are so many lobes that the whole cam becomes over chilled and brittle. A fully chilled billet will break easily.
Other manufacturers don’t bother with chills; it’s much easier and cheaper to make a billet this way. The billet is break resistant, the lobes are much easier and cheaper to grind but the cam will wear much faster.
We use half chilled billets. This is where a small chill is placed right on the top of the lobe in the mold. That way the base circle of the lobe stays soft and the opening and closing side of the lobe gets hard. The wear resistance is where it’s needed yet the cam still resists breaking. A half chilled lobe is still difficult and time consuming to grind but it produces a cam with the best features of both worlds. To our knowledge we are the only K-series cam makers that use half chilled billets.
Our cams are ground on precision CNC cam grinding machines. We also use small diameter grinding wheels. This is much more expensive than normal because a small wheel removes material slower and must be dressed more frequently. A small wheel is necessary to create the reverse flank that roller cams need and to create the subtleties in our lobe profile. Typically other cam makers use larger wheels to cut grinding time and costs and cannot produce a reverse flank.
To reduce wear and friction and to speed break in, our lobes and journals are micropolished after grinding. Most cam makers parkerize their cams, but we have found that micropolishing actually works better. Your factory Honda cams are micropolished for a reason and we wanted to duplicate that.
Q: What is so good about your quality? I can copy your lift and duration and have my stock cams reground for less money. Why are your billets better than others and why can you say yours are less likely to break?
A: As we stated previously, there is much more to cam design than lift and duration. If you want to try, well you are on your own. There are many subtleties with the profile and type of grinding we use. Regrinds don’t work well on rocker arm motors like the K series. By grinding on the cams base circle to get more lift and duration from a stock lobe, you really upset the rocker arm geometry which wrecks havoc with the cam spec numbers as well as potentially creating a lot of noise and wear issues. You get what you pay for.
IPS cams are ground on new half chilled iron billets. As far as we know, other quality K-series cams on the market are ground on fully chilled billets. A chill is a metal heat sink placed in the sand mold that the billets are made in. The chill speeds the hardening of the molten iron and imparts metallurgical changes that make the iron harder and wear resistant right where it needs it most, on the surface of lobe. In between the lobes cools slower and stays tough and ductile resisting breaking. Normally this is a great thing. Unfortunately on a VTEC engine there are so many lobes that the whole cam becomes over chilled and brittle. A fully chilled billet will break easily.
Other manufacturers don’t bother with chills; it’s much easier and cheaper to make a billet this way. The billet is break resistant, the lobes are much easier and cheaper to grind but the cam will wear much faster.
We use half chilled billets. This is where a small chill is placed right on the top of the lobe in the mold. That way the base circle of the lobe stays soft and the opening and closing side of the lobe gets hard. The wear resistance is where it’s needed yet the cam still resists breaking. A half chilled lobe is still difficult and time consuming to grind but it produces a cam with the best features of both worlds. To our knowledge we are the only K-series cam makers that use half chilled billets.
Our cams are ground on precision CNC cam grinding machines. We also use small diameter grinding wheels. This is much more expensive than normal because a small wheel removes material slower and must be dressed more frequently. A small wheel is necessary to create the reverse flank that roller cams need and to create the subtleties in our lobe profile. Typically other cam makers use larger wheels to cut grinding time and costs and cannot produce a reverse flank.
To reduce wear and friction and to speed break in, our lobes and journals are micropolished after grinding. Most cam makers parkerize their cams, but we have found that micropolishing actually works better. Your factory Honda cams are micropolished for a reason and we wanted to duplicate that.
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Re: (ZC1.8crx)
<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by ZC1.8crx »</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote"> Your factory Honda cams are micropolished for a reason and we wanted to duplicate that. </TD></TR></TABLE>
and they still come black with the coating in those green bags dont they?
and they still come black with the coating in those green bags dont they?
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