About Tilden Technologies, LLC
The Company, Tilden Technologies, LLC is run by a father and son team, Larry and Tom Young. Tom comes from a traditional mechanical engineering background at a name brand university, but Larry's educational background is nontraditional for a cam designer (see Vita below). Our automotive interests are also nontraditional. For both of us, our first automotive exposure was to the Model T Ford that belonged to Larry's father (Tom's grandfather). Of course, the Model T wasn't fast enough in our youths, so Larry branched off into British sports cars and Tom into turbocharged Saabs. We're interested in old Fords, British Cars (especially Triumphs) and Saabs. We've never owned a small block V8.
Our interest in cams and camshaft design goes back to 2000. Larry was part of The Cam Project, an effort by enthusiasts to make new camshafts for the Model T Ford. Larry was assigned the task of designing the lobes for the new camshafts. After a crash course in cam design using the book Valve Gear Design by M.C. Turkish and help from other project members, we developed three new grinds. These new cams are precision machined from billet by Specialty Motor Cams. When we started the Cam Project many said that very few enthusiasts would be willing to pay $350 for a new camshaft, when regrinds were available for less than $100. No one would have believed that since 2001, production of the new cams has averaged about 100 per year. That gives a total of almost 1000 new camshafts. You will find complete technical information, dyno results, testimonials, etc. at The Cam Project website.
During The Cam Project we learned a lot from Steve Coniff, who we call Mr. Precision, the best engine builder we know. Steve learned about cams through his desire to win the Montana 500 Model T Race. Don't laugh, these guys are serious racers. The rules allow very few modifications from stock. Steve learned about cams, because that is one of the few areas where modifications are allowed. He has developed several cams by hand filing lobes in his shop. The last of these was so successful that it precipitated rule changes that prevented its use. Our Opticam™ software has features which allow us to design around the rule restrictions, so we've used it to design a couple of successful one-off cams for Steve's Montana 500 effort. The last of these was in Tom Carnegie's winning car in 2009.
In 2001, we purchase a 1959 Triumph TR3A and went vintage road racing. The car was a mid-pack runner when we started and it was great fun developing it into a more competitive car. It wasn't long before we started thinking about cams. We tried a couple of high performance camshafts. One performed very well, but destroyed itself along with the rest of the valve train. The other one lived, but its performance was far from stellar. We kept thinking about designing a cam something like the first one, but toned down enough to allow the valve train to live. For background information, with the help of Uncle Jack Drews, we ran a cam profiler to get detailed lift curves on 6 cams: a stock cam and 5 racing cams. Most were lazy, slow opening cams with a design that would run on a SBC (Small Block Chevy) lifter, making me think they were recycled SBC grinds. From this data and some valve train dynamics calculations we developed a TR3/4 racing camshaft. Jack Drews soon jumped on board, put one in his TR4 and loved its performance. Soon after, Jack's son, Tony, installed one and loved it. We've now ground over two dozen TR3/4 cams with five different grinds, including a high performance street cam. These cams are described in the Technical pages. Jack and Tony's comments are on the Testimonials page.
One of our most recent designs is for a flathead Ford V8. We have a 1940 Ford Pickup project which will get a traditional hopped up flathead. We did not want to develop a one-off cam for this single engine, so we did our research and then purchased a cam with great specifications from a name brand manufacturer. When we degreed the cam, we found it was not as advertised. Another lazy, slow opening cam with seat-to-seat duration 11 degrees greater than advertised. We returned it and made our own cam: 249 degrees at 0.015 (seat-to-seat), 220 at 0.050 and 0.360 lift. It should be peppy for a street motor with 286 cid, high compression heads and dual carbs.
The Projects page has more information about our cars and projects.
Vita Larry Young
Larry received a B.S.Ch.E from Texas Tech in 1970. An M.S.Ch.E in 1972 and Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering in 1974 both from U. of Washington. He spent 1975 thru 1983 in the Research Department at Amoco Production Co. working in petroleum reservoir simulation and enhanced oil recovery. In 1984 he founded Reservoir Simulation Research Corp. with a principal business of development and licensing of reservoir simulation software. That company was sold in 1996 to Smedvig Technologies, a Norwegian company. Larry retired from full time work in 1998 in order to devote more time to his car hobby. Having spent more than 30 years developing engineering software with numerical solutions of differential equations, cams and camshaft design was an easy transition. Valve train dynamics has become a special interest, since it once again involves the numerical solution of differential equations.
Vita Tom Young
Tom received a B.S.M.E. from Rochester Institute of Technology in 2004. Since then he has worked in mobile computing with Touchstar Solutions, design of weight training equipment with Nautilus and currently with solar energy systems with DPW Solar.