Camshaft lobe designers

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Re: Camshaft lobe designers

Post by CamKing »

Now, how many can design the lobes for a given application?
Give them the engine parameters, and the RPM they want to make peak HP at, and have them design the lobes to give them peak power at that RPM.
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Re: Camshaft lobe designers

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David Bly (protege of Harvey, at Crane for 30+ years) is now at Andrews. Crane's last designer (prior to the last move) was Bill Serle.
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Re: Camshaft lobe designers

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cknight wrote: Sat Nov 20, 2021 1:34 pm David Bly (protege of Harvey, at Crane for 30+ years) is now at Andrews.
Interesting,
Andrews just hired Ben from Howards this year.
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Re: Camshaft lobe designers

Post by cknight »

David is retiring..... Or might have already.....
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Re: Camshaft lobe designers

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cknight wrote: Sat Nov 20, 2021 1:34 pm David Bly (protege of Harvey, at Crane for 30+ years) is now at Andrews. Crane's last designer (prior to the last move) was Bill Serle.
Chase
Just wondering who designed the 4541 and 4381 profiles ?
These are pretty special IMO
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Re: Camshaft lobe designers

Post by In-Tech »

Hiya,
This is a very good list and is informative.

The slight mention of Hans Hermann is interesting. When I worked at Erson/Mallory in the late 80's and early 90's, it was quite interesting that Gregg Koechline paid Hans to develop lobe profile families since he used to work for General Kinetics and did quite a bit of development there. At that time,when I met him, Gregg was a mechanical engineer, top lawyer and president of Super Shops along with president of Mallory and Erson Cams. I assumed it was a time thing but he told me that Hans had the math "down" for camshaft design. I already knew Hans had done quite a bit of Indy cam development for Honda. Gregg thought his lobe development was timeless.

Of course now we have the capacity to run some awesome rocker ratios, so, that lobe technology may not apply today. Gregg would have Peterson or somebody wind the springs working with Hans on the lobes. Shoot, in the mid 90's I was running a .510 lobe with a 1.8 rocker turning 11,000 rpm in a PUSHROD bbc and amazing, never broke a spring nor changed one all season.(Not that I didn't have to check/change assemble over 15 times to correct many things during my build, of course geometry was critical)

I don't know if Hans is even still alive since I never had the luxury to meet him. I still use his proven lobes via Erson because they do everything I want and they don't break parts. I might be missing a few hp but my main gig has always been endurance. The LS HR lobes I use are quieter than stock even at ~.621" valve lift with a 1.7 rocker and with the ceramic ball, I have physically tested to 8000rpm.

I really like how Mike Jones thinks and since I am back into engine building due to CARB and issues with Federal compliance/Tuners, I am really looking forward to working with him. Man, I have really seen some horrible LS stuff(all of the big names that advertise) during my tuning of some of this aftermarket LS stuff, excessive valvetrain noise along with not flowing the air, grams per sec, my stuff does. :( I will show plenty of dyno stuff soon :)
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Re: Camshaft lobe designers

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By the mid to late 90's, Hans was jumping around, working for different race teams. His profiles were no longer competitive. He also seemed to burn a few bridges in IndyCar. When IndyCar went to Normally Aspirated engines, Hans was designing the cams for the Infiniti engines. They were never competitive. He then developed cams for the Menards team, but they never made the power my cams were making.
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Re: Camshaft lobe designers

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Good to know, Mike. I look forward to working with you soon, especially your new LS cores. Thanks
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Re: Camshaft lobe designers

Post by hoffman900 »

CamKing wrote: Sun Nov 21, 2021 11:18 am By the mid to late 90's, Hans was jumping around, working for different race teams. His profiles were no longer competitive. He also seemed to burn a few bridges in IndyCar. When IndyCar went to Normally Aspirated engines, Hans was designing the cams for the Infiniti engines. They were never competitive. He then developed cams for the Menards team, but they never made the power my cams were making.
I know he was designing cams for Real Time Racing in the early 2000s.

On Linkedin, he's still listed as a tech consultant for Blair's old company.
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Re: Camshaft lobe designers

Post by hoffman900 »

cknight wrote: Sat Nov 20, 2021 1:34 pm David Bly (protege of Harvey, at Crane for 30+ years) is now at Andrews. Crane's last designer (prior to the last move) was Bill Serle.
Chase, was Bill designing lobes for Glenn Steyers?
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Re: Camshaft lobe designers

Post by af2 »

hoffman900 wrote: Thu Nov 18, 2021 1:29 pm Delong is up there for camshaft designers of yesterday, but I'm talking today.

So far we have:

Mike Jones - Jones
Billy Godbold - Comp
Dan Crower - DCR
Kip Fabre - Cam Motion
Ben Herheim - Andrews
John Andrews - Andrews (sounds like they hired Ben to be trained as his replacement?)
Kiel Rasmussen - Kelford

that currently and are capable of designing lobes in the performance aftermarket. Does Brian Crower (Dan's cousin) design his own lobes as well?

Harvey, Harold, Delong, Bruce Crower, Steve Gruenwald, Hans Herman (retired?) and plenty of others have since passed or retired. Everyone else is just grinding the same stuff that was designed a decade + ago, or copying each other's work and grinding that, or there are a bunch more I'm missing who do contract work or are hiding behind the curtain somewhere.
Another is John Dougherty - DRC Cams.
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Re: Camshaft lobe designers

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In-Tech wrote: Sun Nov 21, 2021 12:03 pm Good to know, Mike. I look forward to working with you soon, especially your new LS cores. Thanks
We're sending the first 40 LS tool steel cores to the heat treater, this week.
We will be holding off on the LT1-Gen5, until after PRI.
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Re: Camshaft lobe designers

Post by cknight »

MELWAY wrote: Sun Nov 21, 2021 6:44 am
cknight wrote: Sat Nov 20, 2021 1:34 pm David Bly (protege of Harvey, at Crane for 30+ years) is now at Andrews. Crane's last designer (prior to the last move) was Bill Serle.
Chase
Just wondering who designed the 4541 and 4381 profiles ?
These are pretty special IMO
That would have been David Bly.
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Re: Camshaft lobe designers

Post by cknight »

hoffman900 wrote: Sun Nov 21, 2021 12:17 pm
cknight wrote: Sat Nov 20, 2021 1:34 pm David Bly (protege of Harvey, at Crane for 30+ years) is now at Andrews. Crane's last designer (prior to the last move) was Bill Serle.
Chase, was Bill designing lobes for Glenn Steyers?
Not that I know of.
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Re: Camshaft lobe designers

Post by cknight »

I'll add in Mark Stessens of Cat Cams in Belgium. Lots of made-to-order/application lobes. Good quality.
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