We should be so lucky! 97-03 is a new style head. I looked at 20+ heads from 98-02 and all had pressed on cam gears. 2-3 gears had noticeable wiggle on the camshaft and one gear would turn 360. Makes me wonder if Ford hired their engineers from the middle east (think industrial terrorist here) to save money on engineering? First we got spark plugs that would not stay in (97-03) then we got ones that cannot be removed (04-06) plus a little wiggle in the valve timing thrown in for good measure. Sounds like "dumb" and then "dumber" to me.
I have had 6 Fords since 1972 but this last one has been the worst and the most expensive. Maybe I should put the old cruise control switch back in and let the SOB burn up for the insurance money?

 

You are right about the journal dia but the 97's have a smaller lobe dia than all the others. Just my lucky day I guess. The machining costs for repairing those cam bearings plus all the money and labor to r&r the heads just doesn't seem very smart to me especially when who knows what unknown piece of aluminum is gonna break and muck up my new rebuild? I'm glad you are having some good luck with your Ford, I could use some one of these times.

 

'91-'93 used a casting all it's own. '94-'95 used a different casting.'96-'98 cars were a different casting,and all of these had bolt-on cam gears. They were all from the Romeo factory. '99-'00 Mustangs were Windsors and had press-on gears.'99-up 5.4L's were ALL Windsors and had press-on gears. '99-'01 NPI Romeos used in Crown vics,etc all had bolt-on cam gears.'01-up Romeo 4.6L's all used bolt-on cam gears.Windsors were the only cams that had press-fit gears,and I'll repeat myself-I've never had a problem with any of them. I've never seen a single spark plug that ejected itself from a Modular that was installed properly-NEVER. I've personally logged over 500K miles on modular powered vehicles since '97,and have never had even a hint of a problem with spark plugs,and I change them all at 50K miles or less-My Tbird gets new plugs pretty often too. My personal F150 has 208K miles now,and still pulls my 30ft travel trailer with ease.My company truck is an '01 F150 that has 135K miles on it,and has no problems with plugs or cams.
My suggestion to you is to stop looking at salvage years for cams,and find somebody with a Mustang that has a set of '01-up cams for sale,and swap those in. Or if you want-I've got a set of press-fit Windsor NPI cams here,and 2-3 sets of NPI romeos.If you want a set,send me a PM,and we'll work a deal out-they're useless to me,I just can't see throwing away perfectly good cams for no reason,so they sit around and hold my shelf down.
JL

 

ALL non-PI camshafts are .472" lift intake and exhaust. That's '91-'01-ALL of them. ALL PI camshafts are .510" intake and .530" exhaust lift-that's '99-present.ALL of them. If you tried to measure the lobe with a caliper-you're gonna have a helluva time getting an accurate reading,and it's possible that you've got a damaged camshaft that you're trying to read,or from your description of the cam bearing surfaces-you may have an oil starvation issue and have worn cam lobes.
JL

 

Ya the lift is not the problem. I had my cams with me at the junk yard and could tell just by looking that the lobes on the junk heads were bigger that mine so I put a caliper on mine and got roughly 2.04" and all the junk cams had 2.18" lobes so I could not use them. My truck was running great when the gear came loose, plenty of oil, the cam lobes and rollers on the rocker arms look perfect. The journals on the heads are badly scored but the hardened bearing surface on the cam looks good. I appreciate the offer of your cams and will contact you later in the week if all else fails here.

 

Where are you measuring at?
JL

 

Must be from the bottom of the lobe to the top.

 

Correct. I measured the widest part of the lobe figuring that any cam I install should have almost the same size lobes as mine or it would push the valves into the pistons.

 

That's not right-the lash adjusters have a working range of up to .130" of compression. Those cams that you've measured have a problem be it a wear issue or a very loose on tolerance for collapsed tappet gap. I'll get out my caliper when I get home today and see what I come up with.I've got 7-8 sets of OE cams at home of different years to check.The most important part to measure is base circle on the cam-the remainder of the lobe is for valve lift only. Those heads cam handle a max lift of .540-.545" over base circle without retainer-to-stem seal interference.
JL