Unfazed by Phasers

While you’re reading this, two marvels of automotive and electromechanical engineering are faithfully going about their daily business of optimizing a delicate balancing act between engine horsepower, fuel economy, and emissions.

The first of those marvels was introduced about 30 years ago, and although OEMs have branded it with different proprietary names and acronyms, most of us know it as variable valve timing, or simply VVT. Regardless of the branding, VVT systems alter valve timing events under engine conditions ranging from cold start to thousands of RPMs. It’s a sophisticated system on hundreds of millions of cars and trucks that relies on precisely manufactured camshaft phasers performing a mechanical ballet that’s supposed to continue without intermission for tens of thousands of miles.

The second engineering marvel came to life just last year in a carefully guarded corner of the mammoth building that is Dorman headquarters in Colmar, Pennsylvania. It exists mainly because too many camshaft phasers aren’t actually manufactured with the precision or quality their marketing shtick promises, and therefore fail well before they’re supposed to. This more recent feat of American ingenuity doesn’t have a catchy acronym and doesn’t need one, because our new VVT camshaft phaser test apparatus is the only one in the world.

It has a singular, mission-critical purpose: to develop and test Dorman cam phasers to the limits of their engineering to ensure that the techs who install them don’t need to worry about being tested to the limits of their patience. With VVT system repair costs to customers ranging from 800 bucks to three grand or more, professionals demand an aftermarket phaser they can count on. Our unique test apparatus helps guarantee that reliability. More than that, it reflects the high level of commitment to OE FIX solutions that distinguishes Dorman from everybody else in the automotive aftermarket.

Conceived entirely in-house as a much faster and more accurate way to develop and prove the quality and durability of Dorman OE FIX cam phasers, the machine represents an investment of more than half a million dollars, including almost 5,000 components and 15,000 hours of design engineering and manufacturing.

Each of its four identical vertically-stacked sections is controlled by what serves as an analog to the vehicle’s crankshaft that can be individually configured to test a cam phaser under load levels required by specified test parameters. The apparatus can test phasers from the same engine simultaneously or phasers from different applications asynchronously.

Configurations within each of the sections that replicate many popular OEM VVT systems are made via a rather ingenious series of precision-machined fixture blocks that Product Manager Joe Gianndrea refers to as “the Wonder loaf,” a tongue-in-cheek tribute to the (almost) equally ingenious idea of sliced bread.

This proprietary technology—software, hardware, enclosure, and the brainpower running it—is the very heart of our cam phaser testing program. It allows each section, independently of the others, to test Dorman, OE, or competitive camshaft phasers for sprocket wear, locking performance, oil leakage rates, and activation time using drive cycle data published by the EPA, and to perform a cold cycle start every eight hours.

And here’s the kicker: Each of the four machine testing sections can simulate 50,000 miles of real-world driving in just four weeks. That’s nothing less than a game-changer for a part category notorious for no-name-brand knockoffs and OE factory designs known to fail within that relatively short mileage threshold after installation. It also means that we can test or have in development four phasers at a time, whether they’re all from the same V8, four different 4-cylinder turbocharged engines, or just about any variation in between.

The test apparatus’ data acquisition system performs a million and a half calculations per minute.

Doug Johnson led the team that brought the test apparatus from concept to creation. He explains that a complex, proprietary integration of electromechanical components and a cutting-edge data acquisition system is what makes this apparatus uniquely valuable to Dorman product engineers and customers. By decreasing the time needed to uniformly test and prove the performance of new phaser designs during their product development cycle, the machine can also significantly accelerate our speed from concept to market for those products, as well as expand our offering of upgraded OE FIX phasers.

“On-vehicle testing of cam phasers, a common method to measure phaser performance, is time-consuming and doesn’t provide accurate or consistent data. This apparatus can simulate every type of drive cycle and load, from a cold start in subzero weather, to idle, to typical highway driving, all the way up to 7,000 RPMs, simultaneously performing a million and a half calculations per minute. The data from test to test, minute to minute, and phaser to phaser, is consistent, valid, and fast.”

For engineering nerds like us, this is very cool stuff. (Yeah, we know, maybe we need to get out more.) But our geek-out aside, here’s why you should care about this aftermarket-exclusive machine: No technician wants to be forced to repeat a time-consuming VVT repair, and no shop wants to eat the cost of a seriously damaged engine because of a poor quality camshaft phaser.

Helping our customers avoid those costly scenarios is exactly how our OE FIX 917-250XD came to be. The original equipment phasers on a whole lot of V8-powered Ford and Lincoln trucks and SUVs built since 2004 are notorious for failing, often just outside the factory warranty window. Turns out Ford’s alloy plate and rotor design aren’t up to the intended valve timing task for the long haul, so we made our phaser better by addressing those documented failure points.

Our engineers tested 917-250XD against the original factory part, along with a competitive phaser claimed to be “better” than the Ford phaser. The data showed that our OE FIX design performed more reliably and longer than both.

The dramatically shorter and much more accurate test cycles that we’ll be running on future OE FIX cam phasers separates Dorman from lesser aftermarket manufacturers by a wide margin, as does the major investment of resources that would be required for those competitors to keep up with us. Put simply, most aftermarket phasers are factory design imitations. Dorman OE FIX phasers are thoroughly tested innovations.

We understand why technicians and DIYers can be a wee bit jaded when auto parts manufacturers throw around words like “quality” and “tested” too often. The reality is that the former can’t be proven without the latter, and our one-of-a-kind testing apparatus can provide both.