I have just purchased an el xr6 cam and put it in and it rattles like a bastard with brand new lifters and i just wondered if it was reground and the bloke who sold it to me never knew it.
He sold it to me as a stock xr6 cam, would my motor still run if its a regrind and i put the cam in without the extra shims?
The 4.0 sounds like a dirty old diesel, i reckon every lifter must be rattling.
The head is an au which some of you will already know, and i decided to give it another go with the e series cam and rockers after i got new lifters and found out they dont line up anyway.

There would be some numbers/letters stamped on the back of the cam for a regrind.
A genuine XR6 cam has the DA ground off the cam, and sometimes DT stamped in its place.

Would it run without the extra shims if it turns out the cam is a regrind?

Yeah, just very rattlely

i had a brand new head and springs put on with a regrind cam and it Did Not need any shims.. It does not rattle at all, he said all the spring pressures or something were all fine and it didnt require shims..

this bewildered me at the time because I've always read that shims are ALWAYS needed with a regrind?

was it maybe because the lift was basically the same as factory 480/460 and only the duration and timing changed??

anyone got any further on this? was a factory futura cam turned into tighe 826.

Righto i might be getting somewhere then, i ran it for about an hour initially and it was still very noisy so i pulled the rocker cover off and the lifters had 32 thou/.8mm clearance on the valves when the cylinder was on tdc which semed like alot to me, it is running right now and is still very noisy and not getting any quieter.
I just spoke to the guy who i got the cam from and he assures me it is a stock cam, does anyone have any ideas?
The stock shims arent roughly 30 thou are they?

One standard sized EL shim for the rocker arms is 1.9mm

If you have just put in some new lifters, maybe they are stuck or not enough oil in them? rattling might be due to 12 of them "ticking".

phong =P~

Ive ruled out the idea of the cam being reground and i already know its not from the lifters being new because it rattled and had s**t of clearance with the old lifters also that is mainly why i removed it in the first place.
Just to clarify that it is a rattle not a lifter tick and even if the lifters were ticking they wouldnt or shouldnt have any real clearance on the valves like they have.

The lifters were pre soaked in oil and once the rocker gear was bolted up the rocker arms that werent opening or closing valves were flopping about then when they should have had basically no freeplay and havent improved with running(same amount of freeplay when hot as when it was cold).
At this stage after running the lifters are rock hard and open the valves no probs without bleeding down but still with a 32thou gap.
It has 32thou clearance at tdc that is why it rattles, you can pick the rocker arms up and wiggle them up and down a bit any idea why there is that much clearance?
I keep coming up with the lifters or the cam being the culprit and both are ok so where do i go, brand new lifters also.
I am taking this cam and rocker gear off 2mozz and i will have to put this crap down to mixing e series and au stuff because noone can seem to explain it and neither can i.

one thing nobody has mentioned yet, is the cam from an el hybrid?

Its not a hybrid

Measure the lobe height and let us know.

new lifters do take a while to wear in though,
shims back in the right way up?

I have the e series cam out and the au gear back in and running
I will measure the overall lobe height of the xr6 cam against a stock ef cam and see if i can measure a difference with the verniers.

I measured both cams and couldnt see any difference in overall lobe size, which means it is a stock cam and its definitely not a regrind or hybrid.
I can only put this down to the maybe the valves on the au head being shorter maybe or just something between the geometry of the two mixes but i couldnt get it to work.
Im glad its over and the next cam this ef with an au head will see, is an au cam

after you soaked them in oil, did you bleed the lifters, and also take that stupid bit of rubber of that makes them get stuck???

if not, that could be your problem ..

even with new ones, the rubber part around the middle can stop them going all the way into the rocker arms,.

Laticia.