i've learned a ton with this experience, but i can't seem to find info on breaking new cams in. i had an old chevy that required sitting at 2k rpm for 45min. somehow i think i would make a lot of people upset if i did that with my bike. does anyone know?

nasomi wrote:
i've learned a ton with this experience, but i can't seem to find info on breaking new cams in. i had an old chevy that required sitting at 2k rpm for 45min. somehow i think i would make a lot of people upset if i did that with my bike. does anyone know?

Here is something i posted a while back ,maybe it will help you espif you newlfietrs /cams arent installed yet.

But if they are installed and motor is ready to fire you can do the following.

a) Fire it up & for the 1st 15-20 mins keep motor at approx 2k-2,200 rpms sitting still with no idle time at all durring those 1st 20 mins. You must also use a minimum of 2 20" box fans placed in front of bike with 1 fan on each side of fork facing the motor on hi speed to cool the motor for breakin. 2 -20' box fans on each side of forks (totaling 4 20" box fans) on high speed facing the motor would be even better.

b) Get things setup so as soon as motor is fired up you can get on the bike and ride it for approx 20 mins or so with no idle time so if you hit stop lights keep some throttle on or have idle speed on carb tweaked higher for 20 in breakin period.

But make sure to read what i pasted below for oil/oil additive suggestions for breakin of FT cams/lifters in case you missed something.

Hope this helps you out.

Scott

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Since you said your going to be installing 4 new flat tappet lifters in your R* just a reminder to not forget to use some kind of assembly lube on the bottoms of lifters and or on cam lobes to along with some additonal zinc added to oil like zddplus or lucas new tb zinc breakin lube to properly breakin the new lifters.

Make sure to inspect the cam lobe/s for abnormal wear peior to instaling & attempting to breakin new lfiters on a used flat tappet cam. If they look good go for it but if old lifters are worn/dished /gouged /etc and some cam lobes don't look good either your chances of completely wiping out a cam lobe or 2 after breaking in new lifters on a 100k mile worn cam showing abnormal wear which would considerably increase the chance of cam failure.

Also, you should realy run some zddplus or lucas tb zinc breakin lube in the oil & zpaste assembly lube on lifter bottoms /cam lobes to do it right for best possbile results for considerably less chance cam/lifter failure post breakin of new lifters.

When breaking in new flat tappet lifters you need the additonal zddp/zinc & phos for that breakin period which is approx 20 mins with no idle time to speak of to keep oil pressure up at max lvl for best oiling durring breakin.

Then post breakin you should also change oil & filter becuuse there's always some metal particulates created when new flat tappet lifters are breakin into a cam esp a used one .

If your not carefull paying attention to these details when breakin in new lifters you could easily end up with a worse problem like a bad cam lobe/s either durring breakin or sometime shortly there after too which would be worse then where your at this time so be carfull to follow these sugestions for best poss results.

BTW,For breakin of new lifters/cam you need a decent amount of zinc & phos /zddp so make sure you running a bike oil with a decent dose of zddp espfor breakin of new lifters.

Could also run some zddplus (to bosst oils zddp lvl in the crankcase) for breakin only too.

For assembly of new lifters/cam-s the people that mfg zddplus mfg a good cam/lifter assembly lube paste thats inexpensive which is avil thru Eastwood Auto tool supply online or the ZDDPLUS website,cranes grey moly breakin paste is good too. Its applied to bottom of lfiters and cam lobes only,motor oil is applied to sides of lifters,not the assembly lube paste.


scott