13. June 2021, 1:57
I was following the discussion about the H. "performance" cam on the forbidden forum and wanted to chime in here.
As mentioned I have recently changed a worn cam for a new one. New stock cams have a mate black color on the contact surfaces - after some 30k km usage this becomes mate silvery with tiny irregularities a fingertip can just feel, a certain roughness that is not there on the new ones.
we changed the cam not because the performance was lacking but the excenter mechanism was faulty leading to irregular idle with cutouts - the cam would sometimes kick in the "depression mode" where the compression is reduced to 50% of its nominal value - in idle this leads to a cutout.
thankfully the picture on the H. site allows for some detailed study - albeit only from one perspective. But some conclusion may be drawn nonetheless.
The H. cam has a shiny silver contact surface. I looks like chrome. The rest of the cam looks 100% identical to the stock version. Form follows function so this may be accidental - but it also allows for the possibility that only a chrome patch was added to the OEM surface. I am assuming here, without being an expert, that a "sharper" cam would need additional material and not the removal of such.
Now if I was in charge of producing a "performance cam" it seems to me way more economical to base this on the OEM version which costs around 25 pounds for the end user (less for a dealer) - I could even spoil 10 of them and by experimentation find out the optimal performance - and then "lock that in" for an additional chrome surface. Additionally some surfaces seem to have been polished by H.
Chrome plating is no miracle work and can be done cheaply in India (and better but not so cheaply in England) and I would guess the price difference between the "elevated" H. version of exactly 10 times the stock is in line with H. usual profit margin.
Following are the H. cam and below a picture of an old used cam for comparison:
(The color difference is likely only a matter of photoshoping the picture which I did not but H. probably did for better effect - as can be seen in some reflective surfaces that probably where modified)
I was following the discussion about the H. "performance" cam on the forbidden forum and wanted to chime in here.
As mentioned I have recently changed a worn cam for a new one. New stock cams have a mate black color on the contact surfaces - after some 30k km usage this becomes mate silvery with tiny irregularities a fingertip can just feel, a certain roughness that is not there on the new ones.
we changed the cam not because the performance was lacking but the excenter mechanism was faulty leading to irregular idle with cutouts - the cam would sometimes kick in the "depression mode" where the compression is reduced to 50% of its nominal value - in idle this leads to a cutout.
thankfully the picture on the H. site allows for some detailed study - albeit only from one perspective. But some conclusion may be drawn nonetheless.
The H. cam has a shiny silver contact surface. I looks like chrome. The rest of the cam looks 100% identical to the stock version. Form follows function so this may be accidental - but it also allows for the possibility that only a chrome patch was added to the OEM surface. I am assuming here, without being an expert, that a "sharper" cam would need additional material and not the removal of such.
Now if I was in charge of producing a "performance cam" it seems to me way more economical to base this on the OEM version which costs around 25 pounds for the end user (less for a dealer) - I could even spoil 10 of them and by experimentation find out the optimal performance - and then "lock that in" for an additional chrome surface. Additionally some surfaces seem to have been polished by H.
Chrome plating is no miracle work and can be done cheaply in India (and better but not so cheaply in England) and I would guess the price difference between the "elevated" H. version of exactly 10 times the stock is in line with H. usual profit margin.
Following are the H. cam and below a picture of an old used cam for comparison:
(The color difference is likely only a matter of photoshoping the picture which I did not but H. probably did for better effect - as can be seen in some reflective surfaces that probably where modified)