I agree with ya.

Lunati, howards, comp, and others all use austempered cores , hence their price of 275-300 a cam. I know lunati will grind any of those cams on a billet core for an upcharge. I would bet there are tens of thousands of austemempred cores out there doijg ok on the basic bbc ....heck, lots of guys i know are worried about getting an 8620 cam core, but stil running a cast cam gear timing set

Memory refresh time.

Remember way back when all those Crane's where breaking ? The cam literally broke just before the dist gear.

I remember a heat treat difference between those breaking and not, but can't remember if there was a core difference.

I remember reading about that , here. It wasnt the 8620 cores, but another core they were using. Not sure if it was a material issue, or design issue though

^^^^Before people get worried about crane, they fixed that issue way back then too.^^^^

Depending on what the core material is dictates the hardening process.

i remember reading about the crane stuff breaking they cheapen up their heat treat process and materials I believe you can tell the difference by the color of the core between lobes they loss that traditional gold color on the cheap ones anyone know of a place to have my Gil tails lengthen on the inners near buffalo?

The color between the lobes doesn't mean anything.

I believe it does...but not 100% positive. The 8620 has the copper in between each lobe because of the heat treating used on the lobes.

Here is a good post on materials and heat treat by Kip Fabre of Cam Motion:

http://ls1tech.com/forums/generation...l#post18547331

For the money you are looking at spending, why not have a custom cam ground and get something that you know will work and work with your electronics?