Ultradyne olds solid roller

[Elroy]

There's been asymmetrical cams, longer then I've been alive. Harold called his "Un-symmetrical". I studied his cams a lot, because he was really our only competitor. No one else was even close to what we were doing. If you looked at Harolds cams, they were symmetrical from about .050" on up. Below .050" on the closing side, they slowed down and had a normal lash ramp. On the opening side, they accelerated quickly, right off the base circle. The velocity at the lash point was about 4 times higher then what our similar sized designs were. I think the reason some people had issues with his designs, was all related to the stiffness of their valvetrain. Back in the 80's, no one had the money to spend time on the Op-Tron(predecessor to the Spin-Tron), and people were still under the misconception, that lightweight pushrods were a good thing.

BTW, it was because of Harolds "Un-symmetyrical" designs, I no longer look at max lift, as the lobe centerline.
When my customers were testing a UD cam to one of mine, and both cams were about the same from .050" up, and on the closing side, but mine was longer before .050" on the opening side, the UD cam always wanted the max lift to be earlier then mine did. They would move them all around in testing, and using Max lift as the centerline, the UD cams always wanted to be on a tighter ICL. This got me thinking, because the cams were pretty close above .050". The only big difference was the intake opening point. After sitting down, and calculating where the valves were actually opening and closing, I found out that if I used the mid-point between the opening point and the closing point as the cam's centerline, the UD cams were on the same ICL as mine.

Very interesting. Thanks for that. Since we are talking history..and I understand if you would prefer to not comment. Who do you feel amongst the more well know American Cam/lobe companies had it the most "together" in terms of design? For some reason I was thinking that Harold(I think that's right) was a student of Harvey Crane or was mentored by him. So who had the best grip on things out of the early ones? Isky, Crane, Herbert, GK? Interesting subject.

[CamKing]

So who had the best grip on things out of the early ones?

Hands down, Ed Winfield.

Harvey Crane was a leader in using computers to help design the profiles.
Ed Iskenderian was the best at marketing.
Harold Brookshire was a great mathematician, with an unbelievable memory.

[hoffman900]

Harold was also one this site’s best gems. Some of what he posted was/is gold, and you knew it was just the tip of the iceberg.

[gmrocket]

A super stock racer told me he tried UD grinds over the years , they just wouldn't work in his combo at all..he was turning almost 11,000 rpm back in the 80's

His words were,, the lobes have some weird things going on.

He's one of the most successful ss engine builders, chassis builders and drivers ever.

[Stan Weiss]

There's been asymmetrical cams, longer then I've been alive. Harold called his "Un-symmetrical". I studied his cams a lot, because he was really our only competitor. No one else was even close to what we were doing. If you looked at Harolds cams, they were symmetrical from about .050" on up. Below .050" on the closing side, they slowed down and had a normal lash ramp. On the opening side, they accelerated quickly, right off the base circle. The velocity at the lash point was about 4 times higher then what our similar sized designs were. I think the reason some people had issues with his designs, was all related to the stiffness of their valvetrain. Back in the 80's, no one had the money to spend time on the Op-Tron(predecessor to the Spin-Tron), and people were still under the misconception, that lightweight pushrods were a good thing.

BTW, it was because of Harolds "Un-symmetyrical" designs, I no longer look at max lift, as the lobe centerline.
When my customers were testing a UD cam to one of mine, and both cams were about the same from .050" up, and on the closing side, but mine was longer before .050" on the opening side, the UD cam always wanted the max lift to be earlier then mine did. They would move them all around in testing, and using Max lift as the centerline, the UD cams always wanted to be on a tighter ICL. This got me thinking, because the cams were pretty close above .050". The only big difference was the intake opening point. After sitting down, and calculating where the valves were actually opening and closing, I found out that if I used the mid-point between the opening point and the closing point as the cam's centerline, the UD cams were on the same ICL as mine.

Very interesting. Thanks for that. Since we are talking history..and I understand if you would prefer to not comment. Who do you feel amongst the more well know American Cam/lobe companies had it the most "together" in terms of design? For some reason I was thinking that Harold(I think that's right) was a student of Harvey Crane or was mentored by him. So who had the best grip on things out of the early ones? Isky, Crane, Herbert, GK? Interesting subject.

Actually Harold worked at GK before there was a UD.

Stan

[goldmember63]

Harold was an interesting guy when it came to cam design. I still use many of his lobes but as he told me 25 years ago all the valvetrain parts must work together and he lamented the fact that he would really rather folks by ALL the matching parts to go with the cam. Yep, I had sprngs fall over and ran skinny noodles for pushrods with those agro .904 flat tappet lobes and found out the hard way. LOL Anyway Harold was a good guy and I enjoyed many hours chatting at UD. Bullet cams is down the road and great to deal with for me.

[Elroy]

No one has caught up with Ed Winfield yet. And he has been gone since 1982.

Link below has a short summary of his life. The man was beyond any explanation of intelligent we understand. AT 18 or 19 years old, he taught himself Fluid Dynamics, from a to z, in less than 3 months.
http://www.mshf.com/hall-of-fame/induct ... field.html

That's pretty amazing. It makes you wonder if people like that are still being born in today's world. That guy would probably be flat out scary with todays tools and technology.

[Elroy]

Bumpin this one back up there////noticing some here using Erson cams got me to thinking. Does Erson have their own cam lobe designer? It seems some of these guys have moved from place to place a bit.

[hoffman900]

Bumpin this one back up there////noticing some here using Erson cams got me to thinking. Does Erson have their own cam lobe designer? It seems some of these guys have moved from place to place a bit.

Mike Sloe (spl?) was, not sure about now. He used to post here too (dacaman12). He, Harold, Mike, etc all had great discussions in some of the threads over the years.

Here is an example: viewtopic.php?t=11713

[Walter R. Malik]

There's been asymmetrical cams, longer then I've been alive. Harold called his "Un-symmetrical". I studied his cams a lot, because he was really our only competitor. No one else was even close to what we were doing. If you looked at Harolds cams, they were symmetrical from about .050" on up. Below .050" on the closing side, they slowed down and had a normal lash ramp. On the opening side, they accelerated quickly, right off the base circle. The velocity at the lash point was about 4 times higher then what our similar sized designs were. I think the reason some people had issues with his designs, was all related to the stiffness of their valvetrain. Back in the 80's, no one had the money to spend time on the Op-Tron(predecessor to the Spin-Tron), and people were still under the misconception, that lightweight pushrods were a good thing.

BTW, it was because of Harolds "Un-symmetyrical" designs, I no longer look at max lift, as the lobe centerline.
When my customers were testing a UD cam to one of mine, and both cams were about the same from .050" up, and on the closing side, but mine was longer before .050" on the opening side, the UD cam always wanted the max lift to be earlier then mine did. They would move them all around in testing, and using Max lift as the centerline, the UD cams always wanted to be on a tighter ICL. This got me thinking, because the cams were pretty close above .050". The only big difference was the intake opening point. After sitting down, and calculating where the valves were actually opening and closing, I found out that if I used the mid-point between the opening point and the closing point as the cam's centerline, the UD cams were on the same ICL as mine.

Very interesting. Thanks for that. Since we are talking history..and I understand if you would prefer to not comment. Who do you feel amongst the more well know American Cam/lobe companies had it the most "together" in terms of design? For some reason I was thinking that Harold(I think that's right) was a student of Harvey Crane or was mentored by him. So who had the best grip on things out of the early ones? Isky, Crane, Herbert, GK? Interesting subject.

Actually, unknown to many, Harold absorbed a lot of his thinking from Don Teweles at General Kinetics right around 1970. Their issue was always that many of their designs could not be best controlled by the valve springs of the day. Harold did a lot to benefit the progress of those type lobes.
Not mentioned here but, especially the flat tappet lobes.

[Elroy]

Bumpin this one back up there////noticing some here using Erson cams got me to thinking. Does Erson have their own cam lobe designer? It seems some of these guys have moved from place to place a bit.

Mike Sloe (spl?) was, not sure about now. He used to post here too (dacaman12). He, Harold, Mike, etc all had great discussions in some of the threads over the years.

Here is an example: viewtopic.php?t=11713

Thanks Hoffman. That'll give me plenty look at///I just kind of had it in my head that Erson was old, antiquated copied stuff.///shouldn't assume. Doesnt' seem they have much lobe selection or at least not published anyway.

[PRH]

I will say that on several occasions I looked like a hero after swapping out some other brand cam for a custom UD....... and then looking at the before/after dyno sheets.

[hoffman900]

I screwed up. Howard’s ended up with Mike and Harold’s designs while working for Custom Camshaft Company (Arrington), and Mike went to work for them. As far as Harold goes, these would be his designs up until 2010 or so, and as he said, he worked hard improve / outclass his designs from his UD days, which is what Bullet sells. His last commercially available designs were with Lunati (I believe he did the Voodoo stuff before CCC, then after CCC he did a few designs which are the TL2 and TLR lobes).


So, scratch that about Erson. They did have someone doing design / consulting for them to improve some of their lobe families.

Edit. An old post of mine piecing together some of the history. Plus a link to Harvey Crane’s old site.

Oh, absolutely. When you realize there are less designers than there are camshaft grinding outfits, it should tell you something.

You also realize that a bunch of the designers have bounced around and left their mark across several places. For example, Harold Brookshire (RIP) started at Reed Cams, then went to General Dynamics, from there he went to Comp Cams as their first designer (where he started designing assymetrical pushrod lobes) and wrote their first design program, then he went out on his own (Ultradyne - which Bullet Cams bought the masters (they also bought Lazer when the owner passed away)). After that ran into cashflow problems due to core availability and the UPS strike and the Feds shut him down, then he designed the VooDoo series for Lunati, then he went from there to Custom Camshaft Company (Arrington) doing NASCAR and Pro Stock work, CCC was sold off and the lobe designs went to Howard Cams. His last stint was back at Lunati and he designed the TL2 (flat tappet) and TR2 (roller) lobe family before his health deteriorated. He did say he always improved on his designs as he moved around, but certainly had his own style (good enough for NHRA Championships, a couple Daytona 500 wins and other NASCAR wins, and other USAC, NHRA, 24hrs of Daytona, etc. wins). Billy Godbold who is the designer at Comp Cams (got his start when his PhD funding ran out in the middle 90s) certainly is influenced to a certain degree by Harold as some of their flat tappet designs look similar to Harold's and he was also coached a lot by Harvey Crane. Harvey and Harold were also pretty similar in their designs techniques.

Harvey Crane layed out all the people he accidentally got into the camshaft business: http://web.archive.org/web/201001120821 ... ndividuals . Of the ones named, only Harold Brookshire didn't steal any of his stuff.

Ideally you need to talk to a cam designer. Mike Jones (Jones Cam Design) is easy to get a hold of, Billy Godbold (Comp Cams) is accessible via social media, Harold Brookshire (RIP) was easy to get a hold of before his passing, but others are hard to get a hold of and you may have to pay a consulting fee, have died, or have moved on and are retired. I never dealt with Dema, but that's what Fordboy is for (amongst other things)!

[Tom Walker]

Hoffman900, your link to Harvey Cranes site was very informative and nostalgic. The history describing the old days and the characters that were so innovative and enthusiastic is inspiring. Thanks for that link, it was so entertaining.

[goldmember63]

That's a pretty interesting read. Kinda funny but the info on Joe Lunati is dead on. I've known Joe since 1983? ish and still see him around a bit,always a pleasant guy.