Plastic cam
- Thread starter LIVIT
- Start date
I've seen plastic camshafts or plastic lobes, on older Briggs engines (but not vintage ones) such as the Intek series.
I've seen plastic timing gears and plastic cam lobes but never a plastic shaft. The steel shaft on the gear end goes all the way through and the plastic part is hollow, right?
It'll probably last a lot longer than you think if they haven't changed the material composition. The flathead governors, the gear portion, are also made of that milky white plastic and they last and last but then again it is under comparatively less stress than the camshaft.
Weird stuff.
I've seen plastic timing gears and plastic cam lobes but never a plastic shaft. The steel shaft on the gear end goes all the way through and the plastic part is hollow, right?
It'll probably last a lot longer than you think if they haven't changed the material composition. The flathead governors, the gear portion, are also made of that milky white plastic and they last and last but then again it is under comparatively less stress than the camshaft.
Weird stuff.
I had never seen polymer (plastic) lobes before. Tks for that info, learned something ! This is not my engine, guy on my FB mini page, asked me for help with it. My advice was to just go ahead and get the modified cam he was planning putting in eventually anyways. Since the stocks springs are around 10lb, he was putting in 18lb springs, this would of created a quick lobe wear issue, correct ?
This is the problem I see with plastic cams. This 4hp cam came out of an edger engine which was run for a while without an air filter. note the embedded particles in the lobes (now small grinding wheels). I don't have the lifters to show but they had significant wear marks on the surface. I have seen metal cams that came out of far more abused engines not show this kind of wear.
