There must be an assembly mistake in that engine if our cam shows wear in only 7.000 miles. I have run our camshafts in the engines of the family Commandos (including racers) for many years and have yet to see wear on lobes. The most "vintage" I know for sure is the PW3 cam in our "family racer" that has seen over 20 racing seasons. No wear. (twenty years ago sourced from Mick Hemmings who had his cams made by the same people and in the same material we use gfor all our camshafts)
After looking at photos of the Fanfan engine our Ashley comments:
1. The oil way from the inlet side of the head to the timing cover side is either blocked, or valve stem oil seal is off – you can see where oil has been drawn down the inlet valve guide on the right hand valve and ran down the back of the valve stem and rose.
2. Tappets around the wrong way, no great deal as this, as this has been seen before on engines that have not failed, but it does show incompetence on the engine builder – he should have queried the difference!
3. Looks like something has passed through the right hand chamber, scores in the piston covered by carbon, any decent engine builder would have polished the scratches out the best they could to prevent carbon adhering and causing hot spots prior to re-assembly.
4. None standard push rods – length of rods? – where are ball ends? The rods are also parallel for their entire length to the reduction to get the ball end on – not ours.
Another fault I have seen is the length of the guides for the tappets are a fraction too long for sports camshafts on some barrels and have to be ground away in that area. If not they wear on the cam and, further, the cam then "closes" their mouth which gives resistance to movement of the tappets. In one case I expereinced in a friend's engine the pushrod jumped out when the camfollower overcame that resistance and closed rather rapidly. Had he gone on no doubt the cam would have started to wear. In his case no damage was done (PW3 cam in 750 engine).
So, if that engine is re-assembled with the same parts in the same manner it is most likely the cam wear problem will re-appear, no matter whose camshaft is being used.
Joe/Andover Norton