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I wonder if someone can list the cam makers that are still manufacturing American cam shafts with forged blanks. If you are guessing, or throwing out names without actually knowing for a fact, please don't bother. Thanks.
Billet just means cut or machined from a single piece.
To be more specific with my question, I was wondering how many cam co's are still using American blanks? but I guess there is no way of knowing.
For roller cams most are sourcing their cores from a few places here in the US. I've been getting cores from Callies and from Cam Motion. Crane Cams was the supplier of nearly all of the carburized cores(ones that are usually copper plated on the barrel). When they went out of business in 2009 Callies bought their tooling and they make cores. I don't buy a whole lot from them but what I have used have been very nice. Same for Cam Motion. I've reground a few cams that might have been originally ground on cores from Estas in Turkey. They have more of a shot peened look to the barrel. They seemed to be ok too.
As far as flat tappet cams go as far as I know CWC is still producing some cores for the aftermarket through Engine Power. Speaking of Engine Power it seems to me that they must be consolidating a lot of their aftermarket replacement flat tappet cams. There are fewer part numbers that are still available through places like Melling etc.
I have not seen a lot of problems with cam cores. I did have a customer bring in a cam for a 351W a few years ago that wouldn't fit in the block. #4 journal was ground to the same diameter as #3 and that core was made in USA.
Here's a used cam that came into the shop a month or so ago. It was brought in by a shop who had taken it out of a customer's 5.3 Chevy. It has no brand markings and origin unknown but he was changing it because it had a lifter failure and also because it was just too much cam for the application. He wanted me to use it for a regrind but the journals were nasty so I used a stock GM 5.3 cam as a core:
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