Steve, how thick is that hardened steel piece? You can only recess block so far before you're into the frt cam bearing. Depending on thickness, blk face dimension has to be maintained for timing gearset to stay in alignment.
Mart, I'm HOPING TA's projected release of the heads after the first of the year holds true I may have Michaels go thru my irons just in case.
See if this works. Open scan. Plate is 1/8" . The hole is 1 -7/8" A cam bearing almost fits into it. I'd be more worried about cutting into the oil galley that feeds the front cam bearing. The plate could be ground thinner on a surface grinder. Or turn the cam surface thinner.
Pic opens, that would be great fix, if oil galley isn't thinned to the point of breakthrough, but need to use modified cams forever to this specific blk. Still thinking the hardened flanged bronze frt cam bearing idea. Will still need to run the cam bumper, plus the small dia cam shoulder doesn't help things from reoccurring on down the road......just not tons of room to squeeze everything in. Have to do some heavy duty checking! How about welding a much larger dia. flange on cam, ground straight & true. It would now ride on the good face area of the blk?
Preliminary inspection shows pickup screen looks pristine. Gear teeth pieces in oil pan, not washed down to bottom points to 6,200 shift destroying dist gear immediately. Engine quit and no oil pressure or rotation, probably saved bearings. Cam brgs look good, haven't opened mains or rods yet. Gear was probably worn very thin though for that to happen. Still checking things out......
I bet another year if were lucky. It's been 10 years now since this was first mentioned they are not in any hurry and now how many motors are left in the junkyards to do this with, nobody uses a Buick 350 for anything. If they (TA) could not have gotten this done with in 5 years they should not have even mentioned it in the first place. Not only has it been 5 now it is 10. Put the irons on in the spring and go out and have fun, especially if this head thing is not done by then. I would bet they are gauging how many people have bought the SP3 and that will be the deciding factor in building these. I mean really, who is going to use them with stock components and such. If you are going to spend that much money on heads you should be going for it performance wise and upping the compression, and building around the SP3 and a roller cam. That is what the heck I would be doing.
They have had a run of castings done, there is a pic somewhere on here with Mike,Sherri, and Mike Jr, standing infront of several sets on a pallet it looked like iirc, the money has been spent for them, and Mike continues to spend as he said they were changes that needed to be made, he has to wait on the foundry to do the castings and in talking to him face to face they give him the run around in getting them cast, as he is a very small fish in their huge pond. I seen and held them in BG , not sure what he didn't like about them but Mike is only going to release them when they are all sorted out. To be 100% honest if I was Mike I probably wouldn't even fool with them as the market for them is so small. Jmo hopefully they are released soon tho
I would send the cam to weber racing and have them machine it for a Torrington like they do for their v6 cams.
i do not know. I would call and talk to brian. The billet v6 cam uses the same nose hardware as a 350. If i were to go to a roller in my 350 this is what i would look into.
I have that same wear on the face of my 71 block, not near as deep, but the point being is wear there was an issue LONG before roller cams, and an MSD distributor was available for the 350 Hi Volume oil pumps were the all the rage back then, and I'm sure I caused the wear myself running straight 50 weight and a Hi Volume pump, my my how things have changed