kargoboy

Yeah, but 6 mos. for a set of cams? That's ridiculous. Whoever heard of a business where you pay hundreds of $$ up front and then wait for six months.
I really had the shorty header set as my next mod but I don't think I want to buy anything from Wagner at this point.
That's just too bad, too, considering the few vendors we Pro owners have.

fluke22

Update:

According to my mechanic, the cams I received aren't going to work. After installing them, he took several measurements and these were way off. I don't have the exact numbers but I can get them tomorrow. He hasn't measured the intake cam, only the exhaust. When he saw how out of spec the gaps on the exhaust side were, he didn't bother with measuring the rest. A few points on the exhaust side would require a shim in the 4.1mm range-- the largest Mazda makes is 3.75mm. There was also some scoring on the journals but it wasn't too bad. It just means the cams aren't new. In his opinion, the cams that I have are reground stock cams. You can't just regrind stock cams unless you add material to them because it decreases the base circle. I talked with Andy briefly today and he was kind enough to call my mechanic. He told the him to make some measurements of the cam lobes themselves and get the specs to him and he would be able to verify whether or not these were indeed reground stockers. Unfortunatley, he doesn't have the necessary equipment to do this, nor should he be required to do this for "drop-in" parts. I don't know... Maybe the mechanic was measuring them wrong, but I doubt it. Also, my cams look different than the ones DaveB has. All of the lobes on mine have a black coating, but after talking to a performance shop, that's normal for ground cams. I will try to talk to Wagner again tomorrow to get this cleared up. My mechanic said he would call him again in the morning, too. I'm not sure what I'll do though. Hopefully this was just an oversight by Wagner AND his outsourced machinist. I don't know if i want to wait for replacements or if they are even available. Either way I have to pay for the labor *ouch*. I really hope the fault lies on the mechanic's side though. Local problems are much easier to solve. We'll see...

scotty878

Wow that sucks to hear man! Hope everything works out for you!

....this is yet another problem with a product from them, their headers crack, cams dont fit, and they dont do what they promised...

fluke22

Thanks Scotty. Actually, I'm really pleased with their header. Let's wait and see how the cam issue plays out tomorrow. I don't want this to turn into another one of those vendor bashing threads-- unfortunately there are way to many of those and they are rarely productive.

scotty878

Yeah, I'm not trying to bash anybody and I dont want to make this thread into that either. But I just know that some people have had problems with their headers cracking and as you probably read in the WOMP thread, everybody at wagner is essentially avoiding matty....It's too bad too, especially if the make quality products....

Like I said, hope you can get the cams to work and if you can, maybe youll see some nice gains! Good luck with everything!

Roddimus Prime

sheesh a 4.1mm gap?!?! good lord, thats like a pinky finger! When I spoke with wagner about his cams I was told he b=purchased NEW oem blanks from Mazdaspeed of japan and had them ground BY CROWER to custom specs created by him and fine tuned by crower. The new billits were the main reason for the high price and dealys.....what I was told anyway.

If he reground a stock cam you're 100% right the base circle will be WAY off and you'll get huge gaps like that. If you hardweld a cam andthen re-grind it that's fine but you can't keep taking away material and expect the lobes to get longer and fatter.

LEADfoot

i might be missing something here
why hasn't anybody bought there own blanks from AWR(http://www.awrracing.com/store/index.php?cPath=2_22_57)

and sent them to CROWER for a grinding(http://www.crower.com/cat/other.shtml)

looks like it would run about

cam blanks $200.00
grinding $200.00

total -shipping $400.00+/-

i bet you could even get Tony to send them right to Crower and save some time and money with one less shipping charge

just a thought

Roddimus Prime

mainly because the difficult part of getting a good cam is finding the right specs. I do know for a fact that wagner spent a lot of time with Crower trying to find perfect numbers for a streetable cam. He sent them complete heads and intake manifolds for flow bench testing and they spent weeks crunching numbers.

I may very possibly buy some blanks and do some serious number crunching for my car. I have a freind here near me that builds race heads and I'm about 15 miles from "Hammer Race Engines". I'm sure Icould spend a few hours with their guys and come up with some profiles for NA, turbo and SC engines. That would be great.

Of course as I say this I'm pretty much disgusted with the protege community and want nothing else to do with it.....why Im spending time and money on having our ecu cracked is beyond me.

hughes412

If the cams don't work I would have Wagner pay for the labor. I know it would be hard to do but for 600 bucks and 6mo of waiting and he advertised them as a drop in. He owes you that. And yes the headers crack. Mine did on 3 tubes. They just don't weld them good enough. Ones I had it rewelded I've had no problems. Who ever came up with the design itself did a good job. I can see why some people are getting mad though. It seems that a lot of parts are coming out like this.

Wish you luck and keep us up dated.

Phantom Cruiser

Who's going to crack our ecu??

fluke22

Thanks Hughes. Not much to say as far as updates go. However, Friday we did measure the cam lobes with a micrometer and the ones I got were definitely smaller than my stock cams. I wasn't able to get in touch with Wagner today. Hopefully I can talk to him tomorrow.

fluke22

I talked with Andrew today and arranged for the exchange of my cams. He said that replacements were currently being ground from new blanks and that I should get them in two weeks. Hopefully it really will be two weeks but I'm not holding my breath.

scotty878

Hope it all goes well for you! Too bad he couldnt be that cooperative with Matty! But good luck with the cams!