Bryan

I have my '88 944 8-valve plain-jane cam out of the cam box for replacement of the various cam box seals and noticed that all the lobes have very visible wear on them. As in the tip of each lobe is polished and the sides of each lobe have brownish wear spots that look like the cam underwent some plating process at the factory and the plating has worn through at these spots.

I ordered another used cam from PartsHeaven and it is worn identically to my original cam. The PartsHeaven cam is supposedly from a 60K mile car. My car has about 100K on it.

I'm used to VW and Audi cams that have no visible wear (they look brand new to the naked eye) on them up to 100K and beyond. Is this lobe wear something all 944's do? The shape of the lobe still looks OK to the naked eye. And the bearing portions of the cam look good.

I have a good picture of one of the lobes I will post later.

Anyone know if this is normal and/or something I should address? I'm putting in new lifters when the cambox goes back together.

Bryan

Tabor

Mine looked as you described at 110,000 miles. I re-used the cam.

rplencne

We sent out cam out this summer to Elgin and they said it was fine. Ours looked the same as yours, had over 170K miles on it, and we questioned the apparent wear also. We had them change it from a -05R profile to a -09R profile, which opens up the exhaust a bit more.

I suspect that if your's only has 100K on it, it's probably still well within spec and usable even if it's not what you're used to seeing.

-Bob P.

Bryan

Bob - was your car an early 944? Pre '85.5? My cam is 944 XXX 155 09 and I think the earlier cam is 944 XXX 155 05. Where I forget what the XXX is. So you put an later cam in an earlier engine? The specs for lift and duration are slightly different post-'85.5.

Bryan

Bryan

Another one for Bob - Sorry I should have checked Elgin's site first. Forget my earlier questions. Replace them with:

How do you like your Elgin cam? Did they re-work your cam or do they stock them? Is their work top-notch quality?

Thanks,

Bryan

Dave

Site? Can you post that URL

Bryan

http://www.elgincams.com

Dave

thanks

Danno

Yes, the pre '85.5NA cars had the same cam as the 944 Turbos.

For those of you who are wondering what the differences between these Porsche cams, I've got a diagram of their timing profiles on my website at:951 RacerX
I'm missing some of the specs on these cams, so if you have them, please email me at: danno@thevine.net

Things like:[list]
lift on stock cams 944.105.155.05 and 944.105.155.09
valve timing and LC on 944.105.155.9R and 944.105.156.09
complete specs on 944.105.155.05R

For those who are thinking about upgrading cams, the WebCam grind #274 is a great value. http://www.webcaminc.com/porsche.html

rplencne

We're pretty happy (so far) with the Elgin regrind. We don't have any HP figures or dyno #'s to compare, but the car pulls pretty well in the 3,500-5,500 rpm range. Of course, we added the cam during the rebuild of a tired 175k mile motor, so it's tought to tell where the extra HP has come from.

In our case, Elgin actually reground, nitrided it, and baked (hardened) our original cam. They did offer to swap me for one off the shelf, but they ended up not having one. The grind that we went with was very simalar to the -09 (late '85 and up 8v), but had a slightly higher/longer lift/duration ... similar to the Web Cam mention by Danno. Our car is an early '85, so it had the -05 cam in it. For the most part, our regrind focuses mainly on the exhaust side, but does add a little to the intake ... but not much. I suspect that those "eyebrows" on the piston tops are there for a reason

For our regrind, we spent $250 IIRC. I would think that this would be a better value than the web cam that's priced at $425. The only difference would be that the Web cam appears to be a new core, while the Elgin would be a regrind of your used part.

I did have some concern about the lifter's oiling hole being slightly mis-placed due to the regrind, but Elgin assured me that it would still line up with the groove in the cam assembly casting. We did replace all the lifters which is probably a necessity if you go with a regrind, and still a good idea if you go with a new core. The car now has about 4k miles on it, so all must be well.

Even though I had found out about Elgin on my own, it ended up that the machine shop that did some of the work on our motor, uses Elgin regularly and also recomended their cams.

-Bob P.

Bryan

Thanks Bob - great info. Since I now have a spare cam from PartsHeaven ($100) I could send it to Elgin and spend a total of ~$350 for a nice cam. Cheapest I've seen a new stock cam is $700 and change. And I can keep my stock cam around just in case.

Elgin claims to have a 944 cam that adds 20hp. Seems odd...If there was a way to get 20hp out of a 944 for a $250 cam swap, I'd think everyone would have one. My guess is that it must compromise low end output. I'd be more interested in torque numbers. I'll see what Elgin has to say.

Thanks again,

Bryan