I guess my point is that if you have the right tool you should have no problem with the cam bearings in your Y, so don't beat yourself up over it.

Easy for you to say, work on your cars.  It's summertime at your house.  Here in the northern half of the States, we are in the grip of winter.  Hard to get motivated to work on a car.

John in Selma, IN

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G1G_qi4oI4o&feature=channel_page

Paul.  It’s a given that the issue with the low oil pressure in the 335 series (351C, 351M, 400M) is indeed well known and so much so that the factory specified oil pressure switch for the stockers was set at six psi to minimize the oil light coming on at idle.  This is not a problem that originates with a rebuild but was present when the engines were first introduced.  I had to deal with these engines when they were new so the problems were well known soon after their introduction and even with a 6 lb oil pressure switch, there were still oil lights coming on at a hot idle in relatively brand new vehicles.  But the cam bearings in that family of engines are a far cry from being the real problem.  The primary issue lies in the main oil gallery and the passenger side lifter bank oil sharing the same oil path instead of having two separate oil galleries.  This ends up having too much oil loss around the lifters themselves and subsequently a serious drop in pressure.  Manufacturing variances in block machine work as well as in the bearing clearances again made some of these engines more marginal than others even though all the clearance specifications were within an allowable range.

Unfortunately the oil gallery design was copied from the 385 series (429/460) and for this you’ll have to thank the bean counters again.  The easy (and somewhat expensive) fix for both the 351C and the 460 engines is to simply bush the lifter bores on the passenger side and have smaller oil feed holes for the lifters.  For performance builds, bushing the lifter bores on both banks is normal.  But if it’s any consolation, when rebuilding the 335 series of engines for stock duty, machining the crankshaft so that the rod and main bearing clearances are on the tight side goes a long way towards insuring a livable oil pressure at hot idle in lieu of some of the more expensive fixes that are performed on performance or racing versions where increased bearing clearances are a necessity.  Going into any more detail regarding lifter bore clearances and the such just gets into more detailed rambling at this point.

Tim.  Another thanks for doing the video.  It goes a long way towards destroying those old wives tales about it being normal to having to ‘scrape’ the cam bearings on the Y’s.

46yblock.  I feel your pain on the dial up as I'm in the same boat.  As far as the reference to the thicker bearing, 'wider' is the term likely meant.  The front cam bearing is wider and dedicated to the #1 journal as there's more load on the camshaft bearing at that particular position due to the tension created by the timing chain.  For myself, if a camshaft does not free turn easily, then something is not quite right and just requires finding the 'hard' spot whether it is a bearing or a warped shaft.  In the end, you should be able to turn the cam with your fingers at the front snout without much effort.  As far as camshaft warpage goes, I don't have a spec in front of me but up to 0.003" would be tolerable.

Ted said it, I have a bad problem with knowing what I want to say but saying something else. I did mean to say a wider bearing.