what kind of numbers did you guys get using a 421, solid roller cam or a blower/epa friendly cam? I dont recall many people using a Solid Roller with a 421 ci

I am assuming that a blower cam and a smog/epa cam are similar, maybe not, I don't know, Indiana does not have inspection laws any more.

I am leaning toward a solid roller cam for the new supercharger engine, whether I stick with the 406 or go 421,

so I am wondering if the jump in cubes is worth the effort to go 421, I will upgrade the heads to AFR-235's with either engine, 406 or 421, so my direction is really only the cost of a new crank, because I have to buy new rods and FI CR pistons anyway.

 

Anything over 400+ cubes with a blower sounds pretty stout. Nothing but good press about 421s around here, though. What were your goals with the solid roller cam? Looking forward to pics of that build when it happens.

 

My cam is easy to smog & certainly small by any standard Larry, it's an HR LPE 219 on a 112. My best dyno was 385 RWHP & a smidge over 500 RWTQ........the HP definately suffers because of the small cam and heads. You might want to check with Jim Barth, IIRC I think he had a solid roller 421 about 10 years ago.

I think anybody that's ever driven a 421 would tell you to do it, they're beastie enough let alone force feeding it.........holy crap!

 

Is this a daily driver or a race car?

I wouldn't go with a solid roller with a driver.

 

Hey Tim, thanks for your numbers, adding boost is going to make "almost" any combo work, the more i read the more it appears that a FI cam is not the same because you can use some overlap for scavenging the exhaust.

I only drive the car on weekends and I am not afraid of SR, a buddy of mine has a car nearly identical to mine, 406ci, TPIS SR cam and he has no issues and it drives fine, I recall "back in the day" some Corvettes and other cars came standard with solid rollers

My goal is a measly 600-rwhp minimum, and I am feeling more and more confident that I can make my goal using my 406, but the only difference is the cost of a crank so , I like Mr. Lingenfelter's adage, cubes is better .

 

Keep me posted, this is gonna be a fun one to watch!

 

Hi LD 85

I have a 421 with a solid roller specs out at 230X230 @.050 114 lsa .630 lift I can meet Ontario emissions no problem. I run 215 cc pro comp heads at this time.{I have no PC parts in the heads} I have ordered AFR 220 from Jim to try and get the power up. On the engine dyno I was able to pull 510TQ and 515 HP with a small 650 carb. The TQ was over 500 from 3000 RPM to over 6000 RPM. I will be trying it on the wheels after I change the heads over to the AFR'S.
You can see my engine specs in my profile if you like.

Hope this helps
Take Care
Brian

 

Thanks Brian, I would be interested to see your results, I am trying to determine the @ RWHP/RWTQ for a solid roller to help determine the @ boost and decide if i want to drive the engine around without the boost for a while.

I have 430RWHP/460RWTQ no with no cats so if the results are better that what my 406ci has, I would be willing hold off a little on the Supercharger

 

Sounds like a nice setup, Brian. One question. Why did you choose a solid roller for a cam with those specs? It is actually a pretty mild cam for the application and can easily be duplicated with a hydraulic roller with less maintanence and stress on the valvetrain. With that cam, you aren't going to pull much over 6500rpm. Willie

 

I have built several 421's. But the ones with solid roller cams were all 240+ duration, and wouldn't pass emissions. I did a emissions legal 421 with a Crane 222/230 and some old AFR 195 heads that made 416rwhp and 440rwtq. I think about 224 intake duration on a 112 lobe sep is getting as close to as big as you can go and still pass.

 

Thanks guys, I glean much from these hints and pointers!

Jim, the AFR 235's would bump that combo up to where i am now with no cats (430/460), and I could get 50% from the ATI to put me at @ 625 or more at the wheels!

 

Hi LD85 and 383vett

Sorry I took this long to check the post.
For 383vett, I went with a solid roller for the high speed ramp rates. One of the builders I talked to had used this cam grind on a 427 sbc and had good luck with it. He posted good HP and TQ over a very wide RPM range, and was able to idle at 800 RPM and pass the emissions. He indecated it worked well with No2 as well. But i have not tryed it on my car. I also had some of the part already.
For LD85, The cam works very well and drives like stock untill you hit the power band. I can tell you in my car with a 2300 stall and 307 rear end first gear is of no use and second is only a bit better. Even with no boost I would think you will have a blast driving it. The TQ is grate and it just keeps on going.
Hope this helps you.
Take Care
Brian

 

Hey Guys, I've talked with a couple local guys that build turbos and it looks like I can save some money and meet my RW-TQ/HP goals by using my 406 rotating assembly, so I'll go that direction which will allow me to pick up the D1 sooner and maybe do the entire build all at once in Jan-Feb time frame.

I will probably still buy a set of heads and for sure a cam but I'll keep everything else, not sure if I will keep the Stealth Ram, I love the TQ it puts out and I am really interested more in TQ than HP.

Goals are minimum 600-TQ/600-HP at the wheels, and a car I can drive on weekends and 5-6 hour trips during the Hot Rod Power Tour etc.

If any body comes across a reasonable deal on a D1 please drop me a note or send me some contact info, maybe one will pop up between now and Jan, otherwise I'll buy a new one from Blowerwerks.

Oh yeah, forgot to popst the cam info one blower guy gave me.

You will probably see something in the .630" lift range with maybe 262/272 @ .050".

 

Sorry for my late reply, I havent been in this forum as much lately.

As you already decided, 421 cubes are NOT needed for 600rwhp with boost. If you were shooting for 600rwhp n/a then yes, more cubes are almost always required.

My friends 406 using a single plane EFI intake and old school AFR heads ported to 208cc and 310cfm at .600" lift has made 521whp all motor thru a 6spd. Cam is a UDHarold (Harold Brookshire from Ultradyne cams who also designed alot of cams for Lunati and now Bullet Racing carries some of his grinds) solid roller with I believe 248/252 deg duration with mid .600's lift. Think near .660". Runs 10.4s at 132 all motor in a 93 trans am. Its driveable but doubt it be emissions legal if it had all the smog equipment and cats.

If you want a solid roller, IMO its not worth the effort to make it smog legal. Solid rollers are for all out hp and high rpms where it becomes hard to control a big valve with hyd rollers.

Now with a blower, 600whp is undershooting with a 406. My 401 with AFR 195's and a small 233 deg hyd roller made 640whp by 5400 rpm on a stingy Mustang dyno which has much higher losses than dynojets, thru a big converter in a Th400 trans...unlocked converter. Only 12 psi. Probably had another 50whp in it with fueling adjustments and timing adjustments but I wasnt there to tune, just to see how it did with current track tune. A dyno jet may have shown 700-720whp no joke. This dyno shows almost 80whp difference on heads/cam LS1's from other local dynojets compared to this mustang dyno. My big 3550+ lb setup went 9.8's at 141 mph with 14psi and 10.0's at 139 on 12psi just for reference. The power is there

It doesnt take much to make a 400" motor go 600whp since a good cam/head combo will do 500whp all motor. Another 100 hp from the blower isnt asking much at ALL.

If you are looking to drive this car, my suggestion is to go Morel Hydraulic lifters + a good hydraulic roller cam. Blower cams need a good bit of exhaust duration split and arent really the same as a emissions cam. Emissions cam need low overlap which comes from wide LSA's and low duration, while blower cams you can have as much duration as you could want, depending on how high you want to turn the motor and the blower cam will have abit more overlap due to higher exhaust duration spread.
A 406 turning 6500 rpms for peak power may want a 245-ish deg cam (hyd roller) or a 255-ish deg cam for solid roller. You wont need to turn that high for 600 whp.

Once you get over 600whp a single fuel pump isnt gonna cut it. At 600whp its stressing a single pump, as it will likely need a boost-a-pump kit. Just something to consider...may need dual pumps or external sump pump setup.

Since you want emissions legal, i'd just run a smaller duration hyd roller with a good valvespring setup (since AFR heads, go 8019 springs). If small duration and lower rpms, LS7 lifters will be fine. IF you want all out hyd roller performance, go Morel lifters.

For what its worth, I'm running Speier racing 245cc heads on my 401" motor and went hydraulic roller with Morel lifters. Cam isnt small, 246/252 .640"/.640" 113.5 its gonna spin near 7K rpms and make 1000+hp hopefully. So you can get wild with hyd rollers. Solid rollers just dont live well on the street. I've seen a few failed lifters after 5K miles or so, some less, some more. Really dependent on the spring rates and cam ramp rates.

 

Aint no way youll pass emissions with that

Get ahold of Chris
He will grind you one based on a lot of different specs and guarantee it will do what you want. The guy is incredible when it comes to getting the right one done the first time. Real expert not someone on the internet or a Comp tech line lol.

www.straubtechnologies.com

 

Thanks guys, I will talk to the cam people, Emissions compliant is not a must, I was using Emissions friendly cam data to compare against a typical range of blower cams to compare duration and valve overlap in order to control the smell that i have now.

The more i read the more clear it is that 600rwhp is not a huge goal, but this is why I want to have a street friendly driver but still control the fuel smell. I am not going for a max effort engine. And I will go Hydraulic roller too, but i have surmised that the blower cam needs to be a minimum of .625", preferably more, depending on the head flow of the head I choose.

 

Well lift could help but its not "necessary" even if your heads flow. My heads will continue to flow to 1" of valve lift but I only run .640". Let the boost fill the chambers. My old combo only ran .564" lift with 1.6 rocker but the heads were done flowing by .600-.650. (AFR 195's)

You can get a relatively short duration cam with HIGH lift if you want to run high lift...its just abit harder to control the valve spring at higher rpm. Comp XE high lift lobes has a 224 deg with .605" lift with 1.6 rocker. 214 deg with .565" lift with 1.6 rocker.
Stuff like that will need 160-170lbs on the seat and 400-450 lbs open pressure more than likely and probably require morel lifters. They are pricey but the best hyd roller lifter on the market that can withstand high spring pressures.

Keeping this mild, I'd be inclined to try a 224/236 deg cam, mid high .550-.570's lift on a 112-114 lsa. Probably put a magnum high lift lobe or maybe an XFI lobe on the intake, and a softer XE or another magnum lobe on the exhaust. It be fairly easy to control at rpm. That cam will have less overlap than my old 233/233 112 lsa cam and should idle better and not have exhaust smell. I didnt have much smell on my car and I dont have cats either. Tune was good and there was no smell.


If you are doing a blower motor, might as well talk to Steve Morris who builds boosted motors for a living and does cams for them. He'll know what to do. Chris Straub is good too who also sells the Morel lifters you may need. Lastly, cant go wrong with Mike Jones from Jones cams or Bullet racing cams. I've used Jones on my last turbo motor but now went back to Bret Bauer at Bauer racing for my new setup since he works closely with the head porter I used. Also ran one of his cams in my 383 nitrous motor and it was awesome.

 

Thanks Justin, I know the guys at Bullet/Ultradyne, they made my last 3 custom grinds for my 406,

I have a local guy that builds turbos and SC's,, Mike Stark at CFM Performance, he is a well known head porter (magazines etc) and he will probably port my next set of bare casting heads based on the engine specifics, he can port AFR's or Edelbrock's so that I can max my TQ,,,,, right now, I am leaning toward the Edelbrock's because they fit the L98 header plug angle better and I imagine that they have better oil returns. They both cost the same both are in the 235cc range

We'll see how it goes, I'll pull my current 406 in December and begin the process. My current 400 block is a two bolt otherwise I would just use it and change the cam. Also since I have the FAST XFI ECU, I am looking forward to the D1-FI as I expect much more flexible tune-ability

 

Mike Stark does some beautiful work one of the better iron head guys out there for sure.

 

Mike Stark is great guy , I'm sending my AFR235 and Super Vic 2 intake to him to work over once i get the heads from Jim ..