Testimonials

Testimonials for the Model T cams we designed may be found at the Cam Project Website.

The following are some emails about our Triumph TR3/4 racing cams.  These emails and web postings have been edited to reduce their size.  Any added words are in square brackets [...].

John James, Emails, 9/16/2010 and 9/25/2010

9/25: Tony (Garmey) was my co-driver at the SOVREN Fall Finale enduro last weekend and he was very impressed with the motor. In fact, it pretty much rained both Sat and Sun. and I qualified second  at Saturday's qualifying race. My best ever and I credit a lot to the broad torque band of your cam. Sunday was wet all day and I finished 3rd, 2nd and 3rd. I believe Jeff Quick has your cam from the motor he bought out of Illinois. In the race I finished 2nd, he won. Jeff raves about your cam, so you might want to check with him.

9/16: Racing this weekend at Pacific Raceways. Had a great outing in Portland at the Baxter Historics in July. The old girl ran every lap of every race. Even took a sixth in the last race! The Larry Young (298Dx) cam is spectacular. Lots of torque, much less shifting and a much more relaxed drive than the XXX cam. The latter cam would be great in a flying mile race with no curves!

Christian Marx, Email, 8/25/2010

For my part I run the 310 cam with stock lifters and have done 3 race events on that cam and about 2000 km road traffic. The engine power was greatly increased to 172 HP with a torque of 224 Nm. The cams torque band is from 3000 to 5500 while the peak power is at 6100 rpm. The last inspection showed all lifters and lobes in perfect condition. I’m really thinking about getting another one for my spare engine I will build after the season. 

Cheers Chris

Joe Alexander, Post to Friends of Triumph List, 8/23/2010

We think the Larry Young camshaft brought life to our engine in our preferred RPM range, that it has never seen before. We have another on order.

Joe and Sean

Brian White, Email, 6/24/2010

I did over 3 hours of track time at the weekend and the car performed faultlessly – the wide power band means that you never feel you have the wrong gear.

Email from Tom Young, Subject:  CVAR Race at Hallett. 4/6/2008

After two split liners, a badly distorted one, collapsed pistons, and chasing a high speed miss for a year; the car is finally running great.  The high speed miss seems to be gone.  As a check, I ran it to 7,000 and it pulled very well.  The power is better than ever before. Several times I was on the starting line with Fred Crowley and his big Healey.  Before, he could always beat me to turn one, not any more.  I ran a 1:34.3 in the first two races.  That’s almost two seconds off my best time, and I believe it may be a lap record for CVAR class VB.  If only we had been running this well at the FoT event in 2006, that time would have put us in 4^th place in the All Triumph Race, ahead of all the TR4s and other TR3s.  Oh, what could have been …..

 Tom

 Email from Tony Drews to FoT, Subject:  MOTRAH 007, part 1,2 and 3, 5/26/2007 

[this was a three part email that has been edited down, the full text may be found at www.team.net/archive/fot/]

Over the winter, I ended up with an engine rebuild and an OD rebuild.  I installed an experimental camshaft designed by our own Larry Young, and struggled to find a crankshaft that was usable.  …..  Larry’s cam is designed with the idea that we want maximum torque between 4000 and 6000 RPM since our engines don’t have the flow necessary to run high RPMs.  It has aggressive ramps that require the stock lifter (not the GT-40 ones).

 We took the motor to an engine dyno in Wisconsin to tune the carbs, find the optimal cam advance (dyno software predicted 0 to 2 degrees advance would be best), and find the optimal ignition settings.  I spent every waking moment getting the motor in the car and getting the car ready for Motrah.  I ended up with two week nights to spare.  Yikes.

 With that cam and everything tuned like it should be, I have never had that much power.  I was able to spin the tires in first by just flooring the gas.  Cool.

The Motrah qualifying race ended up being in the wet.  ….. I ended up coming in 3rd behind a V-8 Morgan and Dave Jahamiak, I think.  It was a glorious drive, feeling the tires AT THE LIMIT in the corners.  The Kink was one of the slipperier corners.  (!)  I kept telling myself: brake early, don’t screw up, preserve the car.

 In the Motrah race, I had a great dice with Jeff Johnk.  ….. I think I ended up in 5^th place behind the two V-8 Morgans, Jahamiak and Babcock.  Best time was in the neighborhood of 2:48.4, 6 seconds better than my best time from last year.  Incidentally, I PASSED Bill early in the weekend (while he was still learning the track).  I told him that was the only time that would happen and it turns out I was right.

 Kas Kastner stopped by after every session and told me my lap times with a smile on his face.  How cool is that?

       Tony Drews

 Email from Tony Drews, Subject: Re: In-car video from Road America, 5/22/2007

 I was very gratified at the results.  The OD worked flawlessly.  I have NEVER had that much power.  You designed a wonderful cam!  Other than Babcock, I was the fastest TR there, and my car's 150 lbs overweight compared to Jack's.  Plus, the driver's not exactly svelte.  I took 6 seconds off of the lap times I was turning last year.  I believe that I have one of the top 3 fastest TR's in the country now. ….. [Jeff] Snook couldn't believe it when I told him I was shifting at 6000 rpm.  Heh, heh.

- Tony

 Email From Jack W. Drews to FoT, Subject: Fall Festival - Road America, 9/17/2006

 60 cars on the grid for the feature race

21 cars in class 2B where the TR3's and TR4's are classed

Jack Drews - first place class 2B

 Email From Jack W. Drews,  Re: Fall Festival - Road America, 9/21/2006

 I was the fastest qualifier in our class at 2:53.5. That was a dynamite lap. Most of them were in the 2:54's.

Last year Tony's car always pulled away from me on the straights. He did not make any changes between last year and this year. This year I could pass him at will, always about 2/3 of the way down those long Road America Straights. It seems that the car has more torque and better acceleration. I was turning a higher speed at the end of all the straights by a couple hundred RPM. The Elva that I beat has always been faster than me but not this year. Tony had beaten my times by one or two seconds at every Road America race for the last two years. Tony has to rebuild his engine this year and he wants one of these cams.

The thing I notice most about the cam is that it is not at all peaky. With every other cam I have ever used, there comes a point at about 4000 rpm when suddenly everything starts working together and you get a boot in the back. Fun, actually. This cam, however, does not exhibit this peakiness. It is a smooth flow of power all the way from 3000 to as high as you want to wind it.

uncle jack

 Email from Jack W. Drews, Subject: cam, etc, 8/22/2006

 In a recent very small paragraph in the last issue of Classic Motorsports, Tim Suddard casually dropped the info that Henry Frye and George Wright had engines that put 145 hp to the ground, which means an engine hp of 165 or so.

When I got my car sorted, I turned a faster time than either of those guys [Henry Frye or Tony Drews], admittedly by only .3 seconds. The point is, of course, that Henry didn't run off and hide. In fact we were the same speed. I infer from this and from side-by-side comparison of acceleration, etc that Henry does not have significantly more hp than me.

uncle jack