Digging up a three year old post. With what is now confirmed from backlander about 1200 cams I can see two possibilities for this anomaly. (I confess, I didn't reread every post to see if it has been mentioned here already, seven pages and I jumped to the end)
One, joe's right, you could put a 1200 left cam in the right side and visa versa. The question is whether or not the cams are symmetrical on each side of the peak, probably not. I'm not sure if the cams are marked left and right or have different numbers. You would think they were if they were different. If the ramps were set up to ease up when closing the valve so seat doesn't slam and bounce, then reversing it could change the filling events.
Two, could Dan have had an 84-85 cam on one side and an 86-87 cam on the other side?? They had totally different overlaps (+10 degrees)and LSA or lobe centrelines, I admit I'm confused on the differences of LSA and centreline. One cam with ten degrees more overlap would give different static compression readings for sure. More overlap should give less compression on that side.
Three, and totally separate from the above issues, and apologies in advance to all who will now have to read through 13 pages of conjecture--lol--- I also was digging details here from msgt's related posts to the cams. She said the 1200 cams had a larger base circle. To me, getting a set of 84-85 cams with ten more degrees overlap, but a mm less lift, makes it a great candidate to regrind. Taking a mm off the base circle would give you 75-77 lift, to go with higher compression. The negative to grinding down 75-77 cams like webcamshafts.com does is that they do it by reducing the base circle and reducing the base circle increases unbalance to the bumpstick. Using 1200 cams would diminish this allowing them to handle the extra rpm better than 75-83 cams. This would increase overlap and duration of the 1200 cams. Sounds like a great way for me to piss a little more money down my leg, right?
Im going to check in with some machine shops here in the Philippines to see if they could do this. My brother-in-law regrinds crankshafts here for 30+ years. He is now up to $390 a day in pay. Sound good? That's not quite $8 US per day. The cost might be considerably less here. Yesterday, I sat my a$s on a chair as my car was hand washed, wiping out door channels, trunk and hood channels, vacuumed out, mats washed for $3.
Go Patriots!