Camshaft lamp

[Burdar]

My first post had all the pictures turned sideways and upside down.  Lets try this again...

Here's my latest project.  I started it last year and just got around to assembling it yesterday.  It's a lamp made from a 5.7 Hemi truck cam.  This isn't anything unique.  It's been done many times before.  Most of the time it's done with an LS cam since they are hollow.  It makes it easy to run the cord through them.  I had this junk cam sitting around and wanted to try making a lamp out of it.  A friend of mine pulled it out of the scrap pile for me.  A couple lifters went bad and ruined the lobes.  I didn't want to run the cord on the outside so I needed to figure a way of drilling out the center.  I thought about cutting the cam into three or four pieces to make drilling it easier.  My father-in-law thought we could do it in two pieces.  So, we cut the cam in half on a band saw and mounted each piece in his lathe.  With a 1' drill bit we were able to get both pieces drilled however it wasn't easy.  It took a lot of oil and about 2 hours to drill both pieces.



With both pieces drilled, I tapped the two center ends so a 1/2" bolt would thread into them.  Then a hollow stud was made by drilling out a bolt to hold the two pieces together.  Since I can't weld, the entire assembly is made to bolt together.  I had a late 70's small block crank pulley I wasn't using so I decided to make that the lamp base.  In order to mount the cam to the pulley, I made an adapter out of 1/2" aluminum.  The adapter is held to the pulley with 6 recessed allen head bolts.





The cam then mounts to the adapter with another hollow bolt.  The end of the cam was already drilled/tapped for the timing chain.  I just found a soft replacement bolt at the hardware store to drill out.



Here is the lower half of the cam mounted to the base.



Then all I had to do was thread the upper half of the cam onto the stud and string the cord through the entire assembly.  I've seen camshaft lamps with a regular lamp shade on the top but that doesn't look right to me.  I'm going to use an old air cleaner lid as the shade.  The only filter I had on hand was an old 4" one.  It doesn't look big enough.  I think I'll stack a few 2.5" filters together to make a larger shade.  To finish off the look, I attached one of the junk roller lifters to the pull chain.

[Cuda Cody]

That's just about as cool as it gets!!!   

[Timbbuc2]

That looks very good, that's what I call recycling at its best

[jimynick]

Nice concept and great work/ingenuity putting it together. Looks great! 

[71-440]

Love it!

[Topcat]

Ingenuity... 

[RUNCHARGER]

Cool: My 472 MP block came from the factory without the left side oil galley drilled (goes from front to back through the lifter bores). I was happy to pay $1k to a machine shop to drill it when I finally found one that would do it.

[Jay Bee]

That is sooooo cool.    Please post pictures with the new "lampshade" and with the bulb on & off.

[Burdar]

The next project will be a crankshaft end table.  I need to find a junk small block flywheel to use as the base.  Then I can mount a glass top to the balancer end.  Hopefully in the future I'll have a shop with a small office area where I can display some things like this.

The same friend that save this cam for me also set me up with a junk 360 short block.  Some people he works with blew it up in a hobby stock car.  That's where I'm getting the crankshaft for the end table.  I'll also be making an engine block coffee table at some point.  The glass tops will be the most expensive things.  Maybe I can find an old glass coffee table at a garage sale for $20 or so and just use the glass.