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Half-Scale Camshaft & Roller Tappet Innovation

5:15
49:56
472K views

At 5:15 in

Leonard Wood's Workshop: Half Size Holley Carb and Ford 429 Hemi Project! (Wood Brothers Racing)

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What happens here

Leonard describes his innovative roller tappet design for the half-scale camshaft. Due to the small size, standard tappets would 'dig into the lobe,' so he engineered a roller tappet with a brass slot and a retaining pin, preventing rotation and ensuring proper function. He tested this design in a go-kart engine for four hours at 3600 RPM with no wear, proving its effectiveness.

Goal: Detail the custom roller tappet design and its successful testing.

Tools and materials

  • Custom Roller Tappet — Preventing wear on the camshaft lobes
  • Go-Kart Engine — Testing the durability of the roller tappet
  • Half-Scale Camshaft Custom-made — Demonstrating the need for custom tappets
  • Brass stock — Fabricating roller tappet components

What they say

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What is this little engine for? Well, this is a test stand. He probably didn't tell you anything about roller pushers, did he ? No. We are building a camshaft for this engine and are going to put a cam from the map. And the card cam required a mushroom-shaped pusher about an inch in size. And the engine we're building only holds half an inch. So the pushrod would hit the cam. So I came up with a roller tappet with a brass bushing and pin to keep it from turning, and installed it in the engine. And we put it in this kart engine for the test. It worked for 4 hours at 3600 rpm and didn't wear out at all. That's it . And I also tested the spark plug. This is a

Auto-generated from the video audio.