Comp cams offers the nitride process to extend cam life. They want $100 to do it. I'm thinking this would be good assurance for longer life from a flat tappet cam. Especially with all the talk of less protection from new oil formulas. Does anyone have experience with the nitride process? I'm looking for pros and cons. It seems to be a good use of $100. A roller cam is a bit too expensive for me.
Any comments are appreciated.

 

Personally I think its throwing money away on an already heat treated camshaft. A quality cam shaft should be heat treated to approximately 1/8" deep. This allows for machining the lobes which if done correctly still leaves plenty of hardened material left. Nitriding is great for crankshafts but I see it eventually wearing through it's .01" Nitrided thickness, (assuming they do it that deep) in a camshaft with constant lifter contact. I'd consider upgrading lifters to the ones that have EDM holes in the bottom.

Just stick with CH-4 and now CI-4 15-40W oils and you will be fine. The new CI-4 still has plenty of zinc in it for good wear protection.

 

I too feel why should you pay them for giving you a quality cam? If they can't get their cams to suvive they need to change their process.
$100 for a simple heat treatment seems high for a company that would do as many as they would.
I use the rotella 15-40 but the old version, not the newer CJ-4 which is to meet the 2007 specs for diesel engines.
Shell still makes and offers the old version, you just have to find a source that sells it.

 

I do not see why it is needed on a roller cam. Flat tappet might see some benefit. $100 could be better spent elsewhere on a roller cam engine.

-Mark.

 

Don't know, but here's a little nugget of info:

Triumph m/cycles (the "original" type) had problems with wear on (heat treated) exhaust cams due to them being partially masked by the liners from the lube being chucked around by the flywheel. Even though they still had lube draining back from the exhaust rockerbox, they still wore a lot more than the inlet cam (which wasn't masked from the flywheel lube). A direct oil feed was sent to the ex followers to reduce wear, but this was deleted on the very late models as it was found that nitriding the cam prevented the wear. I recently swapped out a late model nitrided ex cam after 70 000 miles & there was no excessive wear on it, yet I've seen plenty of wear on normal case hardened type ex cams with less mileage on them. These engines are hard on ex cams, especially if they're high lift, or heavy duty valve springs are fitted, & nitriding dramatically increases the life of the cam.
Do you need nitriding in a Chevy motor? I swapped out the stock cam in mine with 70 000 miles on the clock & the lobes all looked OK, so I wouldn't be overly worried about cam wear (assuming the cam was the original). If nitriding was needed, then wouldn't the cam manufacturers be doing it anyway, or people complaining of bad wear? I reckon that the best thing is regular oil changes with a decent quality oil because what I found with the above Triumph engines, especially with pressure fed followers, is that dirty oil causes massive wear on cam lobe tips & the stellite pads of the followers.

 

Thanks for the replies. I probably will do it to be safe. Comp Cams has a part number for the process 1-111-1. It is also a valid Summit part number. It's $100 thru Comp and $140 thru Summit.