Just to confuse myself more I diverted myself to a non-running 1300 engine I have behind the house. I took enough components off to find TDC with the degree wheel and set about the task of measuring the max lift angle for intake #1 and looking for the crossover/overlap point for the cam lobes. Let me start by restating that this is a non-running engine which we removed from our Spitfire right after we bought it as a project. It never ran right for us and this is the first time I have looked inside. After finding its true TDC I measured and found that max lift for intake #1 was at 119 degrees... 9 degrees late for a standard cam. Then I looked for the crossover point and found it to be... 9 ATDC... also 9 degrees late. So the 1300 never had the correct valve timing but with both the LCA and crossover occurring 9 degrees late, the numbers verified my measurement methods (if the crossover had been set to occur at TDC, the lift peak for intake #1 would have been at 110 ATDC). This suggest even more than before that there is something 'not standard' with the cam in our 1500.
Is there an index of casting/forging numbers for factory cams? This cam does have "Stanpart" on it between lobes 1 & 2. Also between lobes 1 & 2 are some nearly illegible numbers that "look like" 88812188. Between lobes 6 & 7 is the number 25 over the number 224.
I am so fed up with this cam I am ready to buy a replacement... or take the one out of the 1300 and use it. Of course, I could still put the timing back where it was before engine disassembly, or I could split the difference between that and setting the overlap at TDC... or I could just set the overlap at TDC and see how it runs. Like I said, this cam is making me angry. I was hoping that this part of the engine rebuild would be history at this point.
Doug L.
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