Hi all,
I've got the opportunity to purchase a set of Piper BP270 fast road cams for my blacktop zetec.
First question, the cams have done approx 5k miles. Is it advisable to use second hand cams?
Second question, would I realistically see much of an improvement? The engine is standard except the megasquirt ecu.
Thanks,
Liam

Are you getting the followers that were used with the cams? Otherwise youll need to bed them into another new set, you should not use your old ones, even then many engine builders will advise against using second hand cams.

A free flow exhaust, a bit of port tidying, followed by a re map would get the best out of them.

The engine that I would fit them to is practically brand new, no more 500 miles on it, so do you think having to bed new followers in would be neccersary?
I am getting the car remapped soon so would hope to see some gains.

500 mile old followers should be fine, plenty of cam lube on assembly.

Doesn't the Blacktop engine use combined cam follower/shims? You will almost certainly need to adjust the valve clearances when changing cams so will end up changing them anyhow?

Can't remember does the cam lobe bear on the shim, or on the follower with the shim between it and the valve?

I suspect the cam followers are available in different thickness's , in fact they are the shims. That is definitely the case with the Duratec engine.

Yeah I think it needs to be re-shimmed speaking to the guy who tunes the car.
For the minimal gains, I don't think it's worth the hassle.