My cams being installed today and I was wondering if anyone had done a cam and regeted it for any reason? Any big drawbacks?

 

no regrets other than I wish I had done the pully too.....you getting it done at CAM? Great shop!

 

no regrets here, LPE GT11 w/dual springs, pulley, CH ported intake, ARH headers w/cats, X-pipe etc. Car runs great. Good luck, enjoy.

 

mattvette just posted some "hot" numbers from this afternoon from CAM with his set up: about 450/405 to the wheels. They'll redyno tomorrow morn to try and get a little better read as the shop was toasty this evening.

 

Love everything about my cam EXCEPT that it made the drone from my beloved Borla Stingers just about unbearable.

 

There are several things that affected driveability on my A6:

1. Car is hard to hold at a stop with the brake because of the higher idle RPM

2. car "bucks" at 35-45 MPH when the TC locks up and RPM's are low

3. sometimes the car shakes really bad, but not always. Its intermittent, like it "loads up" or something.

But it does go when you push the throttle down. I asked for the smallest cam choice I was offered when I had my car modded and tuned because I wanted good driveability. It seemed OK for a while but it got old with time. I may change cams eventually. It's that or go down the steeper slope of higher stall converter, tuning changes, ect.

 

Vetracer, do you know the specs on the cam. Who installed it? Cost? I'd like to check it out. Do you go to any of the vette gatherings around town or hit up Firebird?

 

You might consider going back to your tuner again for some street logs and tune tweaks. I bought HP Tuners and learned to self tweak mine and after a few tweaks I've got my G5x3 literally running like stock - it lopes (I like that), but it just starts and runs like a normal car. It took me a few days of logging and tweaking to get there. I've got my LTFT's really close to 0 so the tune is pretty sharp. Having a sharp tune also makes the car feel "crisp" with throttle changes. There are a few times it will buck at low speeds but being a 6 speed I can drive around that and I've tuned most of it out.

If you don't want to learn HP Tuners, you could work a deal with Charlie @ RPM motors or other mail order tuners, buy HP Tuners, log your driving, send them the log and your tune and have them tweak it. After a few log and tweak cycles I suspect you will be much happier with your cam. The logging feature tells you what is going on when it's acting up and even a newbie like me can tell what to change in the tune. Since the log shows the time, you can note when the car is acting up and tell them to look at the log there.

By the way on my H/C C5 (with a much smaller cam) I had the intermittent problems like you are - I went back to my tuner a few times and it got a little better but without the street logging (they used LS1 edit back in those days) they didn't have hard data to see what the car was doing when it was acting up so they didn't know exactly what to change. I am much happier with my big G5x3 than I ever was with my 226/226 cam all due to the fact that my tune is much sharper.

To answer the original poster, the only downside so far is:

1. I am down 3 mpg through 3 tanks after cam - part of that is due to a lot of WOT running tuning (and enjoying ) the cam. 99% of my drive is daily city driving, 40 miles a day in traffic.

2. I know my tires are going to wear a LOT faster. I got on it the other day in 2nd from 3000 to 6000 logging - didn't feel any significant wheel spin but looked in my mirror and saw two huge long black marks!

3, I get the "sewing machine" sound in the mornign until it gets warmed up.

4. I plan to change my valve springs every year to be safe. I have Patriot Gold Extremes and for $250 for springs, seals, TI retainers and locks it's not a huge maintenance expense.

 

Why is it necessary to keep an eye on the springs and retainers once you do a cam? I understand the stock equipment can't hold up, but thats why you buy aftermarket beefier/better springs(dual) and retainers(titanium). I guess it doesn't make sense to me that the aftermarket parts that were designed to deal with a higher lift/longer duration cam would wear so quickly.

 

That car is amazing with it's time slips as Joe is a great driver and gets that badboy into the 11's. I pretty sure he toasted my A$$ in the Corvette Challenge a few months back. Nice set-up there Joe with the exhaust switch. Hey can you start a thread about your switch and the time slips that go with that badboy car (consistant/steady 11's) Thanks and looking forward to the description of the exhaust switch that's installed in your car in an upcoming thread. PLEASE Start typing that thread, Charlie C6ROLLER

 

The G5x3 is a very high lift cam and I have tight piston to valve clearance. I read the x3 on a 114 lsa like I have was designed to be the biggest cam that fits without valve reliefs. One valve float event and I run pretty high risk of a valve kissing a piston - resulting in a bent valve under best case or a ruined engine worst (and more likely) case. As the springs get older they fatigue and will have less pressure and the risk of valve float - given that I zing my car up to the redline pretty frequently I feel better having fresh springs in there.

My opinion. YRMV.

 

Hey Charlie, thanks for the kind words!! You are doing a great job piloting that bad machine of yours too. You will stomp me now that you've got Heads and Cam on TOP of that blower!

Here's the info the cutouts. There are 3 of us now with them - unfortunately, one of us had a failure (we just put them on). Worse news is he can't find his receipt so they are balking at warranty. Good news is that the repair is only $35, not bad. Just have Roger drop off your car at Florida Performance for the cutouts - he's getting used to putting them on Vettes! I ought to get a finders fee from the owner.

http://forums.corvetteforum.com/show....php?t=1628234

 

Typically the benchmark for changing springs is you loose hp at higher rpm. The dyno sheet will look flat on top instead of peaking. Usually high lift and high rpm causes the springs to go south over a period of time but the springs themselves can make a huge difference on how long they last.

Personally......I'd dyno the sucker at least once a year just to see where your at and act accordingly. Still trying to figure it out, but I think you need to tune for both winter/summer blends even.

 

See thats what confuses me. If the springs are designed to handle high lift cams, I don't think they should be fatiguing at the rate to where you would need to change then anywhere near a yearly rate. Maybe every 3~4 years. The reason why I say this is because my old car was an Evo and we revved those cars with the stock valvetrain to 7900rpm with every aftermarket tune available. That was just the norm, some people who upgraded turbos would twist them to 8500rpm on the stock valvetrain although you are starting to push it at that point. Those cars run for 50, 60, 100k miles with no valvetrain issues at all even with more aggressive cams. Cams to an Evo guy is like headers to a vette guy, they are easy to throw on and make ~40hp more. I know Vette don't rev as high and that the valves are heavier, but the combination of lower revs(6500rpm) and a proper spring(correct seat pressure, binding characteristics, and spring rate)....I honestly thought that vavlesprings would be the last thing anyone would ever worry about when doing heads and a cam.

 

Are you referring to gasoline blend or differences in air density?

 

Maybe someone with more experience than me will chime in here as my mind could be changed on this.

Dynoing once a year is probably in my plans anyway. And I do change my tunes a lot based on conditions, but at the racetrack. I scan my runs and tweak based on conditions that day. We don't have different blends of gas here but our air is very different summer (9 mos) vs. winter (3 mos).

Remember my car's a daily driver so I put a fair number of miles on in a year. And I am very tight piston to valve since I have Cometic .040 gaskets. One float and my engine is toast.

Fresh valve springs are worth it to me. Relatively cheap insurance.

 

I plan to drop my car off tomorrow for a cam installation. It is a .600 inch lift cam and I will use the manufacturers best springs designed for street use. I talked to the manufacturer about the spring life issue. They felt that, based on my driving habits and uses for the car which includes street only and revving to the redline maybe 12 times per year, my springs might never need to be changed. They asked me to change them in 4 years, anyway, just to be safe. They also said that, if I start to run the car up to the redline often, to change them every year.

The point is, the springs are tough and with light work loads they will last a long time need only be changed infrequently. With heavy work loads (like racing) performed often, they will need to be changed often.

 

I'm confused. If you are only going to red line 12 times per year, why in the world are you going with a cam? The new cam makes all of it's power up high, so you are wasting your time unless you are going to use it.

 

I have to say, this is true. I fought to keep my low end the same by raising compression .5 point with thinner gaskets. Low end's certainly no better than bolt on only (bolt on only is a LOT higher than stock). Here's my dyno sheet to prove it.



Unless he likes the lope...I have to say that is one of the best things about the G5x3

 

One more thing about springs. Every time your engine runs, the springs get cycled to their MAX stress. The only thing that puts stress on a spring is displacement of the spring and even when you are at idle the springs are still getting displaced by your valve lift. So if you run a cam with .600" of lift, the spring sees that lift every time the engine turns over. The higher the lift the more stress is on the spring. The only thing that high rpm's do to the springs is to increase the amount of cycles the springs see. So yes, if you drive 10,000 miles all at 6,000 rpm, then the springs see a lot more cycles than if you average 2,000 rpm for those 10,000 miles. Winging it up to red line really doesn't hurt the springs and doing it 100 times per year is really not that much worse than doing it 12 times per year since the majority of your cycles happened while cruising around.

As far as when to replace the springs, I'm a little surprised that people like Patriot recommended for me to replace my Patriot Golds every 20,000 miles on a cam with only .581" lift. I think they are being conservative for 2 reasons: 1) to avoid failures that make them look bad, and 2) to sell more springs. I would bet (even though I have not run the numbers) that the Patriot Golds that are good for .650" lift would have 100,000 miles of life with a cam that has only .581" lift.

So for Vetteno2, go ahead and get the cam, but run that baby up to red line every time you feel like it just for fun. You won't hurt it. I have a feeling after you wing it once you will realize that you could NEVER just do it 12 times per year. It's way too much fun!!!!