Six Cylinder Cam Followers

[TRier]

Hi all, I'm overhauling an early 6 cylinder engine this winter, from disuse the engine was locked up when I got it. I took the head off before removing the engine from the car and broke a cam follower in the process. My own fault, they were gunged up and just a bit tricky to get out, I had a great idea and made a simple tool out of the rawl bolt, super job, it got them out really handily, the only problem being some idiot just went too far with one of them and instead of leaving it a little bit longer of a soak time decided to tighten up the rawl a little more. As homer would say, "doh, too far", cracked the follower. 

So my cam is fine but I need a new follower, so a set really. I don't really want to change the cam but it seems to be the general wisdom that its best to replace cam and followers together. I think though that makes sense when replacing a cam as the followers are cheap by comparison so why wouldn't you, when its the other way round though is it necessary? This thing will have to be run in anyway so the new followers would have to wear into the cam so to speak either way, whether they came together as new or not, the bottoms of the new followers will be flat and unmarked (one would hope anyway) so........ new cam or safe enough to keep that original lovely ole 280°

 

Niall

[trchris]

Hi Niall

As long as you’ve carefully checked the camshaft and there’s no reason not to reuse, then yes replace the cam follower’s with a new set 

Chris

[jerrytr5]

If replacing the cam, then yes new followers are required. You can safely replace the followers whilst keeping an old cam, but I'd replace them all, not just the damaged one.

Jerry

[TRier]

Thanks guys, always nice to bounce it!

[Andy Moltu]

If you’ve butchered a follower, it might be worth a gentle hone of the bore in case of minor damage which might prevent the new followers from moving freely. A good way of shifting the gum too.

[roy53]

If you want a good used one I will send you one 

Roy

[andyhall]

Hi Niall

I have a set of unused Kent followers that I wont be using if you are interested.

Andy

 

 

[TRier]

On 11/30/2024 at 11:38 AM, roy53 said:

If you want a good used one I will send you one 

Roy

Thanks Roy,I'm OK on used ones.

 

Niall

[TRier]

On 12/1/2024 at 7:54 PM, andyhall said:

Hi Niall

I have a set of unused Kent followers that I wont be using if you are interested.

Andy

 

 

Thanks Andy, I have dismantled now and find that both cams seem to be fine so I will use them along with new followers. I'll have a look at what the kent ones are like and come back to you. I presume they'll be just fine for standard CP cams. I probably need to look at the thing holistically as I am going to go with the roller rockers so I would imagine I'll have to get the rockers and push rods from same source, need to find out if that extends to the followers as well.

 

 

Niall

[Tom Fremont]

Follower bores have to be as new or the followers may not rotate and will surely fail. This is seldom a problem but it happened to mine and my engine builder thought to go with bronze bushings and saw very little space to accommodate them. He wound up honing them all out 0.010" and hard chrome plating chilled iron GOODPARTS followers and grinding them to the finished diameter - all very costly! I then asked for another set of followers in the oversize should the need ever arise ( which it shouldn't as his tolerances are about 1/10 of standard and he's a meticulous, perfectionist engine builder of renown among racers ). 

So the block remains original to the car, for what that's worth.