Well I got the new stock cam installed & broken in and the engine seems to be running a lot better overall. It has a MUCH smoother idle, it's much snappier at lower RPMs, and doesn't seem any less powerful at higher RPMs. The exhaust at freeway speeds has quieted down some as well. I'm not sure if the 270 cam was a bad grind, prematurely worn out, or just a bad match for my engine, but *so far* I am happy to have a stocker back in.

When I pulled the 270 cam, I inspected the rockers, adjustment screws, lobes, and journals. Everything still looks brand new except the leading side of the cam lobes are all polished. I think that's normal for cam wear, but correct me if I'm wrong. All lobes showed this wear on the leading side. There weren't any gouges or ridges on any of the machined surfaces. Timing chain and guides still look good too.

EB I am curious if the 270 cam was ground from the same castings as the stock spec Melling. The casting looked identical and I could only find one stamping that was not the same between the two. I took a picture to show the lobes and also the stamped numbers that were different.

Here are the stamped numbers that were different (bottom is EB270 cam "G 16", top is Melling stock cam "K 5".


Here is the lobe wear after 30k miles on the EB cam (left) versus a new Melling (right) Like I said, I think this is pretty normal cam wear.


Here are the rocker and adjuster screw surfaces. They looked polished, but no scrapes or gouges


I dropped the truck off at the smog shop when I was finished, but they wont get it on the dyno/smog machine until tomorrow morning. As soon as I get the results I will post up the before and afters.

It took 4 hrs to swap a cam, adjust the valves, adjust the timing, and break it in. Not too bad I don't think, do you? For what it's worth, even though I've done this before, I found Arbitrary Notion's 4x4wire tech article to be a very useful reference. Here's a link: http://4x4wire.com/toyota/tech/camshaft/