Camshaft Books

[CamKing]

Howell:“One of the things that I was privileged to help or to test the first samples of was the Optron where you could actually watch the motion of a valve at high speed. If you could image camshaft design and valve spring design and all those components were very difficult at high engine speeds because the only tool you had to look at what was going on was a strobe light. You could take a strobe light and you could at a valvetrain and you could see the valve springs surging and you could see the valve bounce but you couldn’t really develop a better system. The Optron came along about 1963, maybe ’64.”

CHC: Can you explain what an Optron is?

Howell: “What an Optron does is reflect the light off of a polished edge like on a valve spring cap or you can even do it if you cut away the head. You don’t have to have a running engine to cut away the head and you can actually watch the edge of valve. But it transfers that motion onto an oscilloscope. With this you can watch the electronic trace on an oscilloscope and you can watch the valve profile. It should follow the camshaft profile up and down but as soon as you get up to higher speeds it quits following the camshaft perfectly and it starts bouncing when it seats or lifting off the lobe when it goes over the nose of the camshaft. I ran the very first Optron that ever came to Chevrolet engineering back in the early 60’s and the room had to be absolutely dark, the thing was set up on a surveyors tripod and if you bumped it, you lost a half a day’s work trying to get it back lined up. We made the set up a lot better as years went by.”

Cool. 1963. I didn't know it was that old. I didn't see one until about 1983.

[nomad]

Thanks again for the help. I've passed this on to my grandson and he's enjoyed the reading.

[MarkR]

This can be read online
http://www.datsport.com/racer-brown.html

Thanks Keith for sharing.

[engineguyBill]

Haven't read all of it yet, but the Racer Brown article does contain some very interesting and pertinent information on camshafts.