Mutha-thumper (or whatever they call it) Cam...?

[Sean]

Haven't been here for a while, figured i'd check in and see if all you old Farts were still alive and kicking. And WZJunk, I should have bought your Dart. I still haven't found the earlier model around here anywhere-except for a couple of 'restored' ones that apparently contain precious metal underneath the paint, judging by what they're asking for them...

I have a early 90's LT-1 in my F100. The guy I bought it from put a pretty good sized Cam in it, and it runs strong. My problem is, I miss the sound of my slobbering old 292-.505.

The Mother Thumper claims to give you the 'sound' in a roller motor like mine, but how are they doing it? Do you have to switch to non-roller lifters, or can I use the rollers that are already in it?

[rumrumm]

They widen the lobe center to about 106 degrees so there is more overlap.

[Sean]

They widen the lobe center to about 106 degrees so there is more overlap.

But is it designed to be used with roller-lifters?

I tried finding the info on their website, and although it did mention the LT-1, it didn't say anything about whether it used the original hydraulic rollers, or if you had to swap the rollers for Flat Hydraulics.

From what I understand, you can re-use roller lifters, and the ones in my engine only have around 3-4 thousand miles on them.

The engine was built for Street-stock class dirt track racing. The friend that built it played around with it, as far as bigger cam, different heads, etc, but the class he was racing in didn't allow for any obvious modification.  The cam thats in it now is the GM cam used in the ZZ4. He put better springs and pushrods in it too, but had to run it with iron heads and a 500cfm 2 bbl. I put an Edelbrock dual-plane intake on it, and an Edelbrock 4bbl, but haven't changed anything internally.

Compression is too high for anything other than premium, but I've figured out that running about 3 gallons of E-85 mixed with the regular Gasoline in my 16 gallon tank allows me to run it at full advance. Pretty fine line though. Too much E-85 and it doesn't want to start, and runs like crap once it does start...

[purplepickup]

Hi Sean.   Comp Cams website lists the Thumper cams under hydraulic roller cams on this page http://www.compperformancegroupstores.com/store/merchant.mvc?Screen=CTGY&Store_Code=CC&Category_Code=RFHRT .

I'm running a Comp Extreme Energy XR270HR cam in a roller motor and reused my stock roller lifters.  I think I had around 3 or 4K on it at the time.  It's got a good lope at idle, strong at mid and high rpms, and I've got over 20 mpg with it on trips.  I like it a lot.  I don't think I'll ever go back to flat tappets.

[Sean]

Hi Sean.   Comp Cams website lists the Thumper cams under hydraulic roller cams on this page http://www.compperformancegroupstores.com/store/merchant.mvc?Screen=CTGY&Store_Code=CC&Category_Code=RFHRT .

I'm running a Comp Extreme Energy XR270HR cam in a roller motor and reused my stock roller lifters.  I think I had around 3 or 4K on it at the time.  It's got a good lope at idle, strong at mid and high rpms, and I've got over 20 mpg with it on trips.  I like it a lot.  I don't think I'll ever go back to flat tappets.

Thanks George. Long time-no see. Last time I was on here regularly, your computer had self destructed or something like that. Apparently you have taken care of that problem.

I didn't want to shell out the money for lifters if I didn't have to, and since I've already got rollers, it didn't make any sense to me to step "backwards" by replacing them with flat tappets. The biggest one they list says "Street/Strip, needs 9.5:1 CR , 2800+ stall, intake, gears, and headers, very rough idle".

Sounds right up my alley. According to my friend that built the motor, the compression ratio should be 9.8:1, according to the parts he used to put it together. I've got the headers too, but I only have a 2500 stall and 3:90 Gears with fairly tall 295/60 15 tires.

I'm not racing anybody, and 99% of the time I just drive it around in town. I think I can stand to sacrifice the low-end torque to get that "slobber" back...    

I still haven't gotten around to swapping the Drums for Disc's yet either, so a loss of performance would actually be a plus in my case. It looks like I'm getting ready to be 'retired' against my will, so I should have plenty of time to mess with it now.

Some of you may remember that around 5 years ago, I had to have some of the vertabrae in my neck fused from a work related accident. Turns out, over the last five years, pain in other areas of my spinal column have steadily increased to the point where I was living on Percocet and muscle relaxers, even though all I was doing was supervising on construction jobs.

I finally went back in to run the full gamet of tests. MRI's, CT Scans, Contrast Dye injections into my spinal column, etc. Turns out I have degenerative disc disease and severe spinal stenosis. Three of the discs in my lumbar area have deteriorated to the oint where they are allowing the vertabrae to press directly on the root nerves that exit the spine in those areas.

They say they can stabalise it by fusing all 5 of my lumbar vertabrae together. But if they do that, they say it will only speed up the degeneration of my remaining disc's because they have to make up for the 5 that are fused together. So both Dr's suggested applying for full disability in the interest of saving the rest of my back as long as possible.

So thats where I'm at now. Waiting for SS to make their decision. I'm glad I spent all those years in the Union though, because they base your benefits on your wages. The estimate they gave me at the SS office was only $100 less than what my "Take home" pay for a month added up to when I was working full time.

My wife has about two years of college left, so since I worked the first twenty years of our marriage, she can work the next 20. Bonus for me, because all the kids are old enough to take care of themselves now...