marlinspike

Anybody know places that make camshaft blanks (different from saying just camshafts)? Nobody actually makes them for Mercedes, but I figure in this economy somebody will make them if approached with money.

Fabrik8

Try Piper Cams in the UK.

marlinspike

Nobody is going to actually have them (I've tried all the euro sources, piper included), but my thought is if there is some shop in the southeastern US that has been hit hard by this economy maybe I could basically bribe them into making a set.

Fabrik8

Custom cam blanks aren't something that you're going to get for cheap, good ones are either chill cast or cast/forged. Just the tooling cost is going to be a lot of money, even if they really throw you a bone and don't charge much markup. Getting a custom grind for an existing blank is one thing, having a custom blank made is something totally different.

Seriously, Piper or someone like that should be able to get what you need. If no one has them though, you're really going to end up paying for it.

Also try Cat Cams, they do custom stuff also. They make 190E cams for the Cosworth stuff, I know that.

marlinspike

The euro sources I know about. Nobody has made them before other than AMG, and they're out of the business now. I'm actually currently waiting to hear from Cat how many sets the order would have to be for them to do it.

Regrinds are readily available, but they can't be nitride hardened. I've got regrinds in now. I'm think they're good for about 50k miles, tops.

What's "paying for it"? I think the japanese car scene and the modifying old Mercedes scene have different ideas on what "paying for it" means.

Fabrik8

Paying for it means paying for the tooling, the NRE, and any minimum quantities that they want, which sounds like what you're asking Cat about. You're probably talking thousands of dollars per cam in small quantities, and you may have to bite off a few of them at that cost.

This is something that is usually done as an investment by a company, knowing that they will amortize the tooling and engineering cost over the quantities they think that they'll sell. I don't think they'll probably sell many more of the cam type you want, so you'll probably end up eating everything yourself.

marlinspike

Between myself, a couple of other people stateside, and Australia and New Zealand, I might be able to put enough orders together.

I imagine the bulk of the cost is in making blanks, i.e. I could just stack away blanks and have fun with grinds.

Cyanide Jello

Excuse my noobness but what is a camshaft blank? Is that for mock up purposes?

Fabrik8

It's what a camshaft starts out as, before having the journals and lobes machined and ground.

Cyanide Jello

Thank you...

That was my other thought on it after I posted...