anyone built a 2.0L with D-jet using one of these cams?

Like the results?

Hated it?

headrage had a djet+ cam from them....

mild performance cam....

ask him what he thought of it..... it idled smooth from what i remember

i bet the 9550 or raby cam will be better -

Just trying to get all the info I can before I lay out my money for a new cam for my motor build.

i hear ya -

just seems raby has the most info and R/D time on cams....and most known combos

with Aaron. But for a stock FI motor, you probably have your pick of distributors. Might want to quiz them about lifters. See if they had any problems. If they say they've never had problems, I'd get nervous. Seemed like there was awhile there that EVERYONE was having problems. I know some of the things Jake has done to solve his lifter issues and I'd be surprised if any of the cam manufacturers were matching that level.

I had the Elgin 6408 cam with D-jet and liked it. Idled smooth and widened the power band a tad on both the top and bottom.

There is no cam researched as thoroughly for D jet than my 9550..



Remember that Elgin doesn't build Type 4 engines- :-)

Cam grinders in general don't touch engines- they rely on numbers to choose a grind- I don't.

You won't beat the 9550 in a D jet application and you won't find a cam/lifter set up thats as well engineered in compatibility as what I offer.
Read this page to see what I went through for 18 months to back up this statement.
http://www.aircooledtechnology.com/lifters.htm#Spintron

Go for the 9550 cam, I have installed it in three engines so far. Idles good, smooth hp improved over stock.

THanks all,
Jake I will be getting in touch with you soon.

yes, -- but frankly, i don't think we ever got the full story about the cam/lifter scare a couple years back. i certainly don't have the whole story, so i won't start speaking out of my ass, but suffice it to say that i do believe it was at least somewhat manufacterer/supplier specific.

i only mention this because at the time, i was building a T4 engine. i went with elgin, and felt (still feel) that it was the right decision for me at the time. ceramic lifters were both $$$ and extremely scarce. today i'd go with a jake grind, no question 'bout it.

The issues were numerous stemming from crappy lifters with the wrong radii on their crowns to incorrect chilling of some cam billets..

It cost me12K bucks to do the part of the testsing that I paid for myself, the rest of the 20K was split up between LN Enginerings and individual donations from guys like 914 club members.

Cam and lifter failures can still bite someone in the ass if they have a day of bad luck, but we have only lost two of ours since February 2005. We sell several hundred cam and lifter sets each year..

My cams are designed specifically for their matched lifters and vice versa, using one without the other is certain death to the engine. Thats the only way we were able to correct the issue...

Our lifters are Ion Nitrided, parkerized and cryoed and most importantly they have the proper crown radius for the camshaft lobe taper.

Dema Elgin has been grinding cams for years. I think he started in the 60's, I know for sure he was grinding cams in the early 70's. He is very knowledgable. Check out his site: Elgin Cams. I just purchased one and will let you know next summer how I like it!

wow - tons of info on that site

this perked my interest

havent run one in a porsche, but i had one in my big block chevy and loved it. perfect cam- good gas mileage more power and smooth idle. hard to beat any of that (well it wasnt smooooooth, it was lumpy enough to enjoy but still have great vacuuum.

Be careful here

Elgin has been desiging/grinding cams and running his engine dyno longer than Jake has been alive. Elgin also TEACHES at night.

Less than 10 feet from the main office is one of the TOP head porters in all of NorCal (Michael Stimpson)

His grinds are products of 30 years of development. HPH has used nothing but Elgin in his race cars and street cars.

The Orginal "Foley" header was built and tested at Elgins on Bontempi built injected 2.0's.

The Garretson IMSA 914's?? Elgin cams.

Bontempi will tell you right now that he has had NO cam failures with Elgin cams and Elgin reground lifters. I used to deliver lifters to Elgin, boxes and boxes at a time. He would always send me back with "junk" lifters that appeared fine to me, but didnt meet a certain requirement he had prior to "reground"

(he does build engines FYI) just doesnt do 4cyl's any more.

Anyone here ever see Steve Nieslony's 914 run a AutoX event? Elgin Cam/Lifters/Pete Weber header....on Carbs.. 2.0


B

Brad I have used his cams in street engines and race engines... I still use ONE of his grinds with very good results.



I absolutely resent this remark, who cares what he dopes at night, who cares who his neighbor is?

I supersede many individuals that have been in business longer than I have been alive, it happens daily. Their experience is what hurts them most of the time because it impedes their desire to explore. A good example of this is in Brad's post... How many years ago were all those things being developed and raced??? If you knew how many engines I get in this shop that are fucked up and totally msconfigured from guys that have "Been doing this for 30 years" you'd shit a brick!

The reason I don't use more Elgin cams is the fact that he won't easily work with me to create the things that I want to try. When you call Elgin and try to do something outside the box with these engines in short order you'll be thinking like you were in 1974 again- I have tried it on quite a few occasions.

Our styles of engine design with the Type 4 are not on the same level- Thats all... I don't work with anyone that is stuck in the 70s, its just plain counterproductive.


...Exactly. Thats why his effectiveness will never equal what it did the day he stopped building them. Its impossible to fully understand how a cam grind works without direct experience with it in a vast amount of differing combinations.


That just means that he hasn't used enough. Thats just like people that have never scattered an engine, they haven't built enough... Failures happen, when you use enough of a component you will get a bad one.

Reasons like this are why my cam grinding is moving 100% in house as soon as I can find a deal on a CNC grinder.

I got my Elgin 330-1 and matching lifters through HPH almost 2 years ago when Brad was working there with Rich. It was the right decision for me at the time given the money involved and what we knew then about the apparent state of cams & lifters.

I'm running stock D-Jet and have been quite happy with the combination. If I were building my 2.0L Type IV now I'm sure I'd be looking hard at Jake's cams, but I wouldn't feel bad about choosing the Elgin combination either.

He teaches automotive.. meaning he puts in the same amount hours you do!!

I totally agree 100% about him being stuck in the 70's..LOL

He has good cam designs for certain heads/piston/flow combinations.

Yes. You have gone past this point he reached. You did this a long time ago!


Try this one on for size: I'd put a set of Stimpson ported heads up against Lynn's any day!! LOL (if I could afford a set of his heads..LOL


B

We already have... Several of his customers have "Upgraded".

+1. from all i've heard Raby's cams kick ass, but i think someone was just asking about using an Elgin cam... to me it seems like you could lose potential customers by so agressively defending your product (which by all reports IS excellent)... i think it's one thing if you post a dyno sheet of X engine with Raby cam, X engine with Elgin cam- all else equal... then it's fair game... but until then, it just sounds like trying to prove yours is better over the internet... what's that saying about fighting on the net?

my .02

There are "other" engine builders and parts suppliers.

Let's say *every* member here said, "build me a motor".
If only 4,000 members did, at what, 20-40 motors built per year, why should people be expected to wait 100 years for a motor?


I couldn't control myself...

Most people are using a "stock" cam. Why is using *another* suppliers upgrade cam so bad?


KT

Is the old trekkor beginning to emerge from his 3 week nap already??? I hope not, I was hoping he'd stay asleep a while longer..

The stock FI system is very difficult to manipulate with a camshaft change. This is due to the way the stock FI system works and the aspects that are altered when timing events are altered with an upgraded cam.

I had a very difficult time coming up with the 9550 and ended up finding out that it worked so well only after the cam grinder made a mistake on the grind I ordered that I didn't catch at assembly! I had used the base cam for the 9550 with stock FI for a couple of years with OK results, certainly the best results of any cam I had tried with stock FI. I then had an engine that made really good power, idled better and needed less MPS fiddling around with than ever before, but nothing had changed! I tried my best to figure out what was different and when checking the cam "dial in" I found that the exhaust centerline and duration were both altered from the base cam. I then purposely had one of these cams ground and the 9550 was born- its now my best selling cam out of 46 offerings because so many people want to keep the stock FI and get better power, drivability MPG and cooler running. Its very funny what a mistake can create sometimes!

At any rate I did not intend to utilize this post to flaunt the 9550 or any of my cams, but I screwed up and ended up doing that anyway. My intention with the original post was to let people know that choosing a cam for D jet that is optimum is very difficult and the negative impacts of an improper cam have a steep price to pay with tuning, temperature and also the fact that most cams have a tendency to create lean conditions at peak Tq which can cause failures, hot heads and a lot of tail chasing.

Overcoming the issues created by the stock FI and a performance cam were difficult for me dealing with nothing but these engines and trying my best to get more power from stock FI. I knew that I could sell much more engine goodies if I could figure out the stock FI and make it capable of making better, broader, smoother and cooler power.

If it took me that much effort and time to overcome using trial and error methods I have no idea how anyone could do it that did not work with these engines primarily. The recommendations made to me by cam experts from every grinder of type 4 cams were some of the worst things I tried when trying to work through this... Thats when I realized that cam guys need to be told what to do, not used as consultants... If I were still only listening to cam grinder recommendations we would have never crushed the barriers that we have with this engine that works oddly compared to others and conventional thoughts are huge handicaps for most people trying to manipulate the Type 4.

Scott-thundercoat:
My methods of communication are far from perfect and they sometimes piss people off, but thats just me and I have no means of changing, not for anyone, not for any purpose. I'd rather starve or work at a convenience store than to be someone that I'm not. The net is not a place that people can easily express who they really are, so I try to be bold, to the point and effective- thats all that matters and it's only superseded by the actual results of my work.



Its not.. As long as that component is effective. Other cams generally are not effective for stock FI- thats the reason the Capn and others refuse tio use anything other than a stock cam with Djet, because their results with others have been less than favorable. They haven't tried the 9550.

I doubt everything sold by anyone that works with any engine other than the Type 4 specifically. Thats because it is odd, hard to understand and not easy to manipulate. 15 years ago I didn't even trust web cam because they sold more than just VW cams! That was several thousand cams ago!

Mark will build them!

I applaud Jake for his grass roots marketing approach. No other vendor is here in the forums teaching us about their products and giving away tons of accurate free advice, and sharing their research with us. Nobody else, not even the gam grinders stepped up to figure out the cam and lifter problem we had the year before.

I've learned more about type IV internals just listenting to Jake's radio show for the last two months than I have reading rennlist/pelican/914club for the last 5 years.

Nope, not a damn one. They all made the test work more difficult to do by not giving us any discounts on products.

It took 18 months and 20K bucks to figure out the issues, 12K of that money came out of my pocket and required this device to be built for accurate testing purposes .



If you think any cam grinder that grinds Type 4 cams has one of these you are sadly mistakened.. This device gave us the capability to run lifters with radically different approaces on lobs specially ground to compliment them. With this device I solved our problems.

hey well written above. good points all. i know how it goes about being proud of something you made, so i cant fault you for that. plus, from all of the people recommending yours that speaks for itself i'd say. i can understand where your coming from and as you said better to be yourself.

This is really of no interest to me. Just watching.
I just think it's funny that only one company on earth has quality cams for T4's.

And it's not VW/Porsche...


KT

Trekkor, your observation is correct. The stock cams wear worse than anything, totally wiped out after 50K generally but they'll keep on living for much, much longer even after being dished..

At this stage of the game what you are saying is true.. in todays world its hard to keep flat tappets alive with the materials and oils on the market. thats why I'm working so heavily on the roller lifter program for my complete engines. The first three engines are already underway and I'll be done with the first round of testing in April!

that shouldn't surprise you. they both gave up on the T4 30 years ago and moved on ...

a lot has happened since ...
Andy

Like adding a couple more cylinders...

I heard today that Rich Bontempi makes 180 hp from his 1.8's with his Elgin cam. I wasn't aware of that...Or that he's been doing that for 20 years...or that he has over 70 1st place wins racing that motor.

I learned a lot today.


KT

Racer Chris' FP 1.8 engine I built in 2005 used an Elgin cam and made 186HP.. Its certainly not the optimum cam and I have 11 grinds that'll be going in our FP car, in six different engines at various times over then next couple of seasons..

If you don't make 175 from an FP engine in a 914 that realy isn't any reason to go to the track... It the goal of len and I to tip the scales at 200 from an FP in the next year and it won't be with an Elgin cam.

Yes, Rich has asked me his share of questions, especially when he hit oddities with Pat Pickerells engine that he'd never seen before. I had been boitten by the same issues before... he is definately a competent builder, but the fact is that none of us know all of it and the things we have specialized in teach us their own share of lessons....

Good post!!


KT