kelford cams

[mr_monkey]

Whats it cost roughly to have them reground? I have 4 in the v6 that i'd love to have done.

-Nathan

[RedMist]

RedMist, what work has Kelford done for you on your car? How did you find them at that time when developing the products for your car? Who did you work with?

My 16 valve engine was originally built by an Ex TWR engineer. It's ports dramatically reduced and then port matched to what was then a Weber manifold. I replaced the webers with silvertop TB's with a custom adaptor again mated to the inlet port face. Kelford supplied a shim under bucket solution, springs and some weld builtup L7 cams. They have performed flawlessly with no noticable wear.
Kevin is a little egotistical but I cant say I've had any issue with his product. In addition where everyone else states its almost impossible to get HP from the 20 valves his end product really produces, not only the numbers but the speed. One of which, a pretty stock 20 valve with bumped compression and a set of his cams I cant get near.

I wouldn't use Kevin for port work, not because I dont believe in his work, just I have very specific ideas on what to do to produce the torque and HP I require.
However Kevin developed the entire 16 valve of Wayne Moriarty. Although the engine produces 5bhp less than mine its appears to be a stronger engine and surprisingly still uses shim over bucket.

In December we (I and an engineer named Mark Pawsey) re-developed the engine and got an additional 10% in flow by further shaping of the port post the port choke.
The engine didnt produce the numbers we were expecting and we had (JD I think) come and time the cams for us. With a little dyno work we produced a considerably fatter torque curve and 10 additional HP over the last rebuild. He's definately worth the small cost to get a very accurate cam timing that will produce straight off the bat.
I've also talked with several of the other engineers there re my 6a10 (v6 1600cc engine) and they have surprising knoledge re an engine I thought was very rare and totally undeveloped.

[RH9]

Would never touch a smellford cam let alone put one in my engine. I've seen enough of his products to be put off.

Genuine Jap cams arent that dear at the moment anyway with a favourable exchange rate

[atmosports]

I can say the only real hassle I've ever had with them has been a set of built-up/welded up cams, the first set was probably fine, they did have some wear on them, more so than a billet would do. The next set failed big time, the weld material cracked off, I'm not gonna point the finger at Kelfors on that though as I can't guarantee that the second lot of cams was the same material/hardness as the first lot & I also think we changed the cam specs & went for more duration as we had a class valve lift limit. The cams failed & the engine died, though it was written off to development & quite posssibly the cams failed like the rest of the motor due to oil starvation/contamination not neccessarily caused by the cams coming to pieces. Since then I've had numerous cams from Kelfors with no hassles. I've had six identical cams from them ground to the same specs & I've checked them all to be within 1/2 a degree of the specified specs. All the Formula Ford, NZ V8 tourer cams along with numerous others are done by Kelfords & they are the only cam grinder I would use in NZ(I use overseas grinders for some stuff as well). I've generally dealt with Kevin or Phil & had no problems, though in saying that I've generally done my homework & know exactly what I want. All I can say is everyone has bad days & even company from time to time produces dud components & maybe you were the unlucky one.