What makes our cam follower different?
The basic design of our cam follower is different over the OEM unit. We moved the holes from the face of the cam follower to the edge. This move in the holes will aid in lubrication to the face of the cam follower. We made our cam followers from a different material, this material has been used in lifter, cam shaft buckets and shims for the last 30 years. Why the OEM FSI cam follower is made of tool steel... no idea. We have added material to the surface contact to eliminate defection and our cam follower face to wall interface has a taper down design that shares the load through the transition.
The most important part of our cam follower is the hard chrome face. The hard chrome has been used for years in lifters, cam shaft buckets, and shims in many different applications. These other applications have seen loads more than double the load of a FSI fuel pump at 150 bar of fuel pressure. The technical details are all over the internet showing the benefits of hard chrome for this application, why the OEM cam follower doesn't use hard chrome... no idea.
During our testing we tried several different coatings, ranging from dry film lubricants to VPD applications. We had followers with DLC coatings and every coating that 3M makes. We even tried some armory coatings for weapons production. With all the testing we didn't find a single coating that could compare or perform at the level our hard chrome could. The coefficient friction of hard chrome is better dry than most of the other coatings tested wet. Hard chrome wet testing had more than two times the coefficient friction "lubricity" of any wet test from the others. This was a case of trying to make a better part, but the best was already tested, tried and trued for us... hard chrome was the solution.