225 Camshaft Supply Drying Up

Same production cost and at least two to 3 orders of magnitude less of a market. Little wonder the parts cost twice as much with an order of magnitude less of a selection. But there must be a little money left in it or the selection would be zero.

 

I called Melling.
What I was told is that they are not discontinued but have no idea when they will be getting blanks from the foundry, they were ordered in April.
It's only going to be a small run of 300 I think is what he said.
They only have orders for 36 of them so it doesn't appear they are in much of a hurry.
Could be a couple more months before they get around to them he said

 

There is only one place that manufactures all of the cams for the big names... Melling, Comp, Howards, Summit... etc.
There are some smaller operations that custom grind cams like Bullet, Jones and Texas Speed but these shops still need to get blanks from the same foundry.
For the most part the custom cam grinders focus on where the money is at..... V8 engines in the Ford and Chevy varieties.
I'm sure that a billet odd fire camshaft could be made but your going to have to pay for everything from design time to boxing it up for shipping.

 

I guess the chinese blank factory is slowing down.

 

I run an Isky in my OF231. Extremely smooth and a wide powerband. Personally, I don't care for the Comp grinds.

 

Has anybody tried Schneider? They do regrinds on your core. Not sure if they can support Buick or not.

When I was a kid, I used to send letters to them (snail mail, right?) for their decals.

 

https://www.oregoncamshaft.com/

 

They ground an AMC 327 cam for me - much harder to come by than a 225 cam...

 

Thank you Chuck for sharing.

 

My engine builder designed this cam for my 225 about 10 years ago as part of a complete rebuild, and had Comp grind it. It has a good deal of duration and lift, but with the 112 degree lobe separation, the rebuilt engine idles very smoothly and doesn't "lope". There was no noticeable change in low end torque following the rebuild, but mid and upper RPM ranges now have significantly increased power. He had previously built a number of 231's before rebuilding my engine, and knew what he was doing when he spec'ed this cam, as it runs extremely well.

 

Given the unavailability of new performance cams at present, a friend of mine who is currently getting his 225 rebuilt reached out to both Berry Cam Service and Oregon Camshaft to explore getting his original cam reground. From what they both told him, I was surprised to learn that these shops can effectively regrind an original camshaft into a performance cam. The diagram below helps explain how they apparently accomplish this:


As I understand it, they do this by reducing the radius of the "heels", or base circles, of the lobes, which in turn creates a greater differential in the relative distance measured from the cam’s center point to the heels, and the center point to the "noses" of the lobes. This newly increased differential allows changes to be made to a cam's lift and duration during regrinding.

There’s no doubt more to it than that, but I believe that describes the basic process. The pushrod lengths would of course have to be changed in order to accommodate the new cam profile.

My friend sent the cam card in the post above to both shops, and both replied that as long as his original camshaft is in good enough shape, they should be able to regrind it to conform to the specs indicated.

 

My friend Mike, noted above, once his original cam was removed, realized that 4 of the 12 lobes were virtually gone. Rather than having those lobes built up and the camshaft reground, he ended up calling Isky and ordering one of their 225 performance cams. The one he ordered has similar specs to those shown on the Comp cam card above.

It was expensive (over $400), but Isky appears be the only source at present that says they can deliver relatively quickly. They told him they would have to make the cam for him, and said they can ship it in 3 to 4 weeks. Hopefully this timing proves to be accurate.

 

I've heard good things about Isky, although I've never personally dealt with them.


This also prompted me to google them and learn Ed Isky is still alive at 103!

 

My 225 camshaft came from TA Performance. If I remember correctly, it was a "RV10" cam. It was ground by Crower. The only issue is they ground the keyway in the wrong spot which I found when I degreed it. I was able to compensate by adding a new notch in the timing gear. In any case, I get very good low end torque and a smooth idle.

 

This seems like a serious deficiency.
Good that you were able to compensate. Nonetheless...

 

I just got a Melling SBC-8 from Rock Auto.
So it looks like they are back in production.
Get em while you can.

 

21 minutes after your post and it shows out of stock.....

 

Click on the "notify me when availiable"
I'm guessing one will appear.
I don't think it's something they keep in stock and they order them on demand.
Summit is still showing a couple weeks out, but they haven't pushed it further out for a couple weeks

 

Might work with RockAuto.
My impression is they seek out and market third-party overstocks and close-outs.
There might be one on a retailer's shelf somewhere.