hughes engines cams

[wizzard]

was wandering if i could get some feed back on them.are they worth the cash or should i stick with isky?ill just be runnin a healthy hydralic in my next 360 not for street use

[eric414]

i would go with Hughes engines or better yet go get a custom grind.

[skankweirdall]

I run one of the Hughes max velocity .630 lift mechanical flat tappet cams in my car. It picked up 4 tenths over the MP .590 cam. Very significant increase and it sounds like a roller at idle too.

[eric414]

Yeah alot of people thought i was using a roller also with the hughes camshaft!

[451Mopar]

I just installed a mild hydraulic Hughes cam into a friends 440, and when we installed the cam, I measured the profile at many points to see how agressive the profile really was. When I put the measurements into the new desktop DynoSim program, to get a simular profile I was close to #5 (High) for the ramp rate. I don't know how that compares to to other Mopar cams, but the profile showed quite a bit of area under the lift curve for a mild cam (I think The HE1928BL cam, it what we installed.)

I had the information on my computer, but my hard drive crashed last week and I lost all the info, but I think I have a print out somewhere? I think I gave the printout to my friend, since it was for his engine.

These high rate of lift cams do make power, but cost a bit more, and require higher valve spring pressures. As mild as the HE1928Bl cam is we are going to run a Crower dual valve spring setup (because we already had the valve springs.) We were lucky because the dual spring setup has the same seat pressure, and only a slightly higher spring rate than the recommended valve springs. Because we are using dual springs, we need to break in the cam with only the outer springs installed, then re-install the inner springs.

So for what we gain with the cam is a bit more torque/power in our RPM range (and smoother idle), but at greater expense and a bit more labor (having to re-install the inner springs.)

[John Kunkel]

Hughes' main selling point has been that their grinds specifically take advantage of Mopar's larger lifter diameter while their competition merely puts the same GM profile on all of their lobes.

I notice some of the competition is now marketing grinds specifically for the larger diameter lifter. Ain't competition grand?

[rumblefish360]

I'm with Eric414 on this for sure.

451Mopar, I'm surprised you took the time to do that cam mapping process. I thought I was the only knuckle head around that would do this.
There cams do take advantage of the lifter (mostly). There race ground cams take everylast bit.

[Billydelrio]

There are many of us that map the lift profile of cam lobes. Its is a good feeling knowing I know more about what is inside my engine than the other guy knows about his engine!

[hotrod7043]

Harold Brookshires old Ulradyne theory area under the curve and designing cams for the engine family work And Hughers Knows That.

[451Mopar]

As a side note, when I profiled the Hughes 1928 cam it was pretty much a symmetrical (opening ramp simular to closing ramp) at lifts over 0.050" lift.
This was verified using the lobe seperation method of finding the installed center line. At all the points tested above 0.050" the installed CL was 108 degrees. The installed position was also where Hughes said to install the cam using the intake opening at 0.050".
Below 0.050" the exhaust closed a bit slower, which makes the installed CL "appear" to be diferent.

For those who ask if degreeing a cam is worth it, when we installed the cam straight up "dot-to-dot" and cam was 4-degrees off (I think retarded.) We had the multi-keyway timming set so it was pretty easy to advance the timming 4-degrees.

[skankweirdall]

Originally Posted by 451Mopar

For those who ask if degreeing a cam is worth it, when we installed the cam straight up "dot-to-dot" and cam was 4-degrees off (I think retarded.) We had the multi-keyway timming set so it was pretty easy to advance the timming 4-degrees.

But you didn't really answer the question. Is that 4 degrees worth it? I've been told that advancing or retarding the cam just moves the power band up or down about 50 RPM per degree.

I can see where this might make a difference if you didn't have enough head flow or valve spring to move the RPM's up, or if you had an extremely tight converter or tall gear set where you need the power down lower but we are still only talking 200 RPM with 4 degrees.

So is it worth it? It was to me because I don't have any piston to valve clearance so I had to move the cam around to get something even close to acceptable.

[451Mopar]

I think it's worth degreeing the cam, just to make sure I din't screw up installing it
A guy in our car club "thought" he installed his cam straight up using one of the multi-keyway timming sets, but he ligned up the wrong "dot" for the keyway and was like 20 degrees or more off. He knew he had a problem when the engine had no power and would not rev over 3,000 RPM.

Anyhow, I think on a mild cam being 4 degrees off you may never notice unless your near a critical parameter like valve clearance, cylinder pressure limit for pump gas, too tight a converter, etc.

An old sanity check when installing a cam, it to see if the intake and exhaust are both open nearly the same amount (overlap) when the piston is at TDC.

[DartGT66]

that's true, it's good to degree the cam, so that you know where it's supposed to. Wether the car runs at it's best with the cam in that position is another thing, and can't really be judged without trying. So, itäs actually possible that you get better ersults without "correcting" the cam timing. Still worth to check it so that you know where you are at