Future plans call for GM's Hotcam. In the mean time I was wondering what heads are best suited for this cam. I have read here several time that you need to by a cam that supports the flow numbers of the heads your using. I would like to keep my stock LT1 heads and send them out to get a good stage III porting. How does this sound?

 

It's a good casting, lots of people here have had great results.

Get the stock intake ported while your at it.

 

it would probably be a good idea to discuss cam choice with the porter in question. i'd imagine that he would have the best recommendation for what you want.

I also would not lock yourself into the hotcam without talking to the porter first...

 

get the stg 3 porting and get the intake ported as well!
this is a great offer and deal!
your friend
Sean


I agree the hot cam is a great cam! but youll want to get a cam matched to the flow charts of your heads bob should be able to help you with that. but comp cams would be the best people to call after you get the flow charts!
good luck your friend
Sean

 

Worked for me. Also had my intake fully ported, as BrianC mentioned, and had all the coating done, valves, combustion chambers, exhaust runners and the bottom of the intake. Next short block I build will get the tops of the pistons coated too.

 

I agree that for maximum power you would want to get your cam matched to your heads, but ask yourself do you really want maximum power?

I know that sounds kinda like a dumb question, but think about it. A lot of the things you do on a cam to gain upper RPM power will cost you low end torque. This can cost you big time in the driveability / gas mileage department.

I would be VERY cautious of a head porter's advice on a cam. I know because I used to work for a head porter. Very often they will spec some cam that their guy "just wants to see" what it'll do. Sometimes the owner is happy, sometimes the owner is not. Sure the porter can have bragging rights that their heads are on a 500 HP car, but the owner may ulitmately hate it.

The Hot Cam is about the single best cam out there in terms of the compromise between horsepower / torque / driveability / and gas mileage. Yes there are plenty of other cams out there, but here's how ti works. If you go too small you're gonna see a very good power increase and you'll be happy with how the car drives. You might not ulitimately like the peak power numbers, but the car will still be driveable.

If you go too large it might make fantastic dyno numbers but it may very well "ruin" the car because it's too tempermental to drive on the street. The Hot Cam certainly isn't the only choice out there, but it's a very good all around choice. If you talk to anybody about a custom cam make sure they understand YOUR goals and look to satisfy them. If somebody recommends a cam make sure that they can tell you what type of mileage it gets and how it drives. If they've never personally driven a car with that cam, then they'll be very hard pressed to do that.



If you want information about the Hot Cam, here are some pages that might interest you.

http://www.wku.edu/~nathan.plemons/htmls/corvette.html
http://www.wku.edu/~nathan.plemons/h..._corvette.html
http://www.wku.edu/~nathan.plemons/h...rformance.html

 

What you say is correct as usual, but in addition...

I am not sure "matching" cam to heads means just "maximizing" power with the most aggressive cam possible.

The first step is to look at flow numbers vs lift......so you would want to select a cam that has a lift to give you maximum flow based on lift....lift has relatively little effect on driveability

The second step is to look at how aggressive you want to be in terms of driveability.......now we are looking at durations, overlaps, timing, etc.......these items effect maximum power and driveability....

So you should ALWAY try to match cam to flow data to first match efficiency and secondly to consider the tradeoff in max power & driveability..and so you should also ALWAYS match cam to your desired driveability/power objectives

 

Just for some reference, here is the flow data for my heads...(hope you can see the table, when I paste the formatting gets lost)

Lift Intake Exhaust
0.1 62.5 50
0.2 133 102
0.3 185 139
0.4 228 176
0.5 261 202
0.55 270 208
0.6 273 214
0.65 267 219

This was the result of "pocket" port & valve job....

Hot cam at .525 lift wouldn't be a bad choice, but a little more lift especially on exhaust would be a little a better..

BUT the REAL problem is, if you take, say my flow data to 10 different people you will get at least 10 greatly varying cam recommendations.......I tried this approach......CompCams on successive calls to the tech line gave greatly different suggestions..

Ported LT1 heads would seem to be a very good choice for the Hotcam..

 

Just another thought to share on this subject........since I believe GM designed the LT4 HotCam to go with the stock LT4 heads(probably with the ...777 intake gasket), it might make sense that the "optimum" heads for the hot cam are the stock LT4 heads..

Notice when GM offered the 'hot cam" for the LS1 they altered the durations slightly?????

I am sure the stock heads would not max out power, but just sharing my daydreams....

Ported LT1 heads ought to do just fine.....

 

Thanks guys for some really good info. This is a tuff choice for me. Many guys run the hotcam and swear by it. I surely dont want a cam that will jeopardize driveability and emissions but at the same time I, like most guys on the board, want to unleash some extra power out of there LT1/4. Since I have the LT1 heads it just seems logical to port them.