Here is my experience over the last almost 30yrs. The OLD Lisle tool had a steel shaft, and would transfer more hammer energy to removing/installing the cam bearings. The rubber sleeves fit well into the arbor expanding collets. About 12 yrs ago, I purchased a new Lisle tool to use as an install tool only being that it was new and clean. Well, it was so bad due to it's cheaper materials to increase profits, I used the old tool, and only use the new tool to remove the old bearings. You have to wail on the arbor as it is made of aluminum, and hammer energy is lost. Also, the brown sleeves did not fit into the grooves in the collet sleeves. I had to go round and round with the Lisle rep explaining this problem. It seems that the mold tools were so old, the features molded onto the sleeve to retain it onto the collets had a large radius, and would not allow the sleeve to compress to the collet completely. This had the effect of pushing the tool out of the cam bearing as you tightened it, and the hammering would damage the cam bearing trying to install it. It took about 6-8 months, but I finally got a package with 2 sets of new sleeves that were fixed, and fit much better. They wanted me to test them and give feedback on the replacements. The tool worked much better, but not sure how long the old sleeves will be out there in the world. As far as the aluminum shafts go, the only way to fix that is to make one out of steel. With careful use, and attention to detail, the hammer version works ok. For those hard to install cam bearings in dieses and new LSX blocks, there is always the $1000 BHJ cam bearing installer that uses a threaded pulling action to install the bearings.
