i just got my hands on a 2011 c6 base a6, its pretty much stock. i wanna do a cam in the future and i was looking at the stage 3 btr cams. i was hoping you guys could tell me if its a good choice or not and some supporting mods id need. thank you guys for your time.

 

with the stage 3 your def going to need to do an aftermarket stall. I'm not sure how big, depends on what BTR calls for but I'd guess higher than 3500 stall speed. That means a good trans cooler as well. I would for sure go to a link bar lifter with something on that end of the spectrum (though I'd recommend them for any cam swap, GM lifters are garbage). All the other cam musts (valve springs, retainers, pushrods, 3 bolt timing set, ls2 dogbone), might as well put a good balancer on it since your already there. I'd also plan to do headers/mids while your doing it. You can run a stock manifold with a cam but eh... kinda defeats some of the point in my opinion.

 

The best performance mods for starting out is cleaning, learn to clean and maintain the engine first.
Don't be too quick to open the engine, it is real surgery. One little careless bit of sand can ruin the engine, destroy a cylinder wall, clog a passage, catastrophic failure.

First learn to maintain the seals of the engine, to keep dirt out. Investigate the seals. Learn how to test for leaking seals. You can test and replace front main, rear main, valve cover, oil pan, o-ring, and where is the cam plate seal. Check the crankcase pressure and enhance the PCV system to draw more vacuum in the crankcase, to help keep it sealed and keep oil inside.

Once you begin learning to care and maintain the correct way, performance is a lot smoother pathway.

 

while I agree things should be handled with precision I’ve seen guys ram Ls heads down with impacts in dirty garages and go out and run that setup for a year without any trouble while throwing 30lbs of boost at it… GM made them pretty idiot proof for the most part. I’m all for doing it the right way but a piece of sand isn’t gonna ruin your day with an Ls lol

 

A year is nothing. In that time irreversible damage could be done to the oil system, eventually trash the block. This forum and others like it are strewn with these types of failures - lifters that catch grit, cam bearing spin for 'no reason', oil orifices altered, oil leaking from seals allowing contamination, rings that won't seal sticking excessive wear in the bore and the engine starts smoking. There are many failures associated with age and power that have nothing to do with age and power, it is a result from filthy dirty mechanic hands and lack of awareness to pressure differential at key seals, particularly crankcase pressure and PCV related. Blow-by gas contains carbon which just like sand will clog an orifice and there is an enormous problem in the V8 category with people ignoring that fact and blindly purchasing parts that actually cause it to happen more quickly. Because they lack education in how engines work and just keep copying each other, which are copies of other bad copies.

Yes the LS is great, Some of them can 10-20 years 200,000 miles from 05' 600-900rwhp stock bottom LS engine and the bearings come out nearly mint. Impossible without cleanliness and careful setting up though.

Forum should focus teaching. Teaching has a beginning, but no end. Anyone can add 1000 or 2000hp whenver $$ without understanding why it doesn't last, and you can do it over and over for 20 years without understanding why they keep failing and never learn. Built engines are less reliable than stock engines, statistics has shown for every engine this is a case.
The beginning of teaching combustion engines is how to maintain and clean them. Not how to make power. Power will make itself once you understand cleanliness.

 

everyone has different ways… I’m not saying you shouldn’t strive for cleanliness… but it’s not reality… the reality is every day thousands of people do sloppy back yard mechanic *** **** to Ls motors and enjoy the hell out of them doing it. Theres no one right way.

 

So when the machine shop leaves grit in the engine and it scores the cylinder walls, thats a right way?
When the owner puts a high flow air filter that allows a grain of sand to enter the cylinder ring, and score the walls repeatedly, thats a right way?
When the owner fails to change the oil, allowing contamination to spread, thats a right way?
When the owner neglects crankcase pressure and allows contamination to circulate through the engine oil creating deposits, that is a right way?

No. None of that is the right way. I think you have it absolutely incorrect on this. I am not picking on you- heed this warning: machinery, whether its in a vehicle, or a space ship, or some power plant, the oil system and rotating parts need to remain STERILE. There is absolutely NO allowance for sand, debris, grit, silica, dust, dirt, pollen, fungus, Any of that, as it will all have far reaching implications on reliability. Consider pollen for a moment. What is pollen? A single grain of pollen contains hundreds of millions perhaps billions of metals and biological molecules, for examples Sodium, Potassium, Sulfur, Manganese, Molybdenum, Chlorine, etc... Pollen contains sticky carbon conglomerates and reacts in the presence of heat and pressure to form sticky tar-like deposits on the engine's internal parts, especially rings at the interface of the chamber. Pollen, just like sand, has far reaching consequences within an engine oil system and it's friction interfaces, any of these lead to excessive wear and eventual failure.

The engine oil is intended to be completely contained within the engine, sealed up and away from contamination. Any air entering the crankcase is filtered via an OEM high quality paper air filter. And even this could use with some improvements for increased longevity. The OEM Does a mediocre job; we can take it much further by adding crankcase vacuum and increased filtering. An engine could last 1,000,000 miles or longer this way if its maintenance is kept up. The downfall of a performance engine thats been tuned perfectly and maintained perfectly only has 1 recourse for failure: contamination.

 

An analogy - driving a car

Is there a right and wrong way to drive a car?
Air bags are like soft bearing materials which can embed debris in case of contamination , taking it out of circulation with minor defect
Seat belts are like the oil filtering, there in case of various types of accident, but you'd rather not need to use them
Roll cages, helmets, crumple zones, etc... intended for accidents
Engine wear is an accident. A modern engine does not appreciably wear within 200,000 miles, barely any at all, mint bearings are common at 500k for some engines.
With the rate an engine rotates if there was any appreciable wear it would quickly be ruined in a couple of minutes. This is the eventual fate of a oil orifice clogging- instant failure, some time after the initial induction of the accidental contamination.

Saying that there is no 'wrong' way to modify an engine, is like saying that there is no wrong way to drive a car.
Its like saying , "some people like to crash their cars constantly, and others do not, there is no right way"

If you believe that, then its a logic issue.
Logically, we never want to use our seat belts, air bags, crumple zones, etc... because it means we've crashed the car, permanent damages to the structure.
The same goes for oil filtering, soft bearing materials, oil orifices which depend on 'good driving' (no accidental contamination) we would rather not need to filter out sand and carbon debris, but if we get lucky the bearing catches it permanently embedded, or the oil filter can catch it, before it lodges inside a lifter or closes up the orifice on some capillary within the engine or ruins the cylinder walls. That is, air bags and seat belts do not work 100% of the time, its a maybe. Maybe they save your life, maybe not.
well, maybe the oil filter saves the engine, maybe not.

saying 'no right way' is like saying its okay to crash cars on purpose because seat belts and air bags will save you. And each bit of debris is like another new car crash - maybe the seat belt (oil filter) saves you once, twice, three times, but how many bits of debris is contained within a pinch of dust? Normal outside air ranges 10 to 35uG of 2.5uM debris which for common contaminant as SiO2 works out to around 300 quadrillion molecules of debris per cubic meter. An engine sitting open to normal clear air is becoming contaminated rapidly with unimaginable debris over time. The debris entering an engine without air filtering is unimaginably horrific, permanent, disastrous.

If you just wanted a season or year from an engine and then trash it and replace it, I think many people have to do this because they lack the cleanliness or tuning ability to keep it alive. Sure, thats a thing, crash the car on purpose after a year and get another one. However if you actually want to drive the vehicle with 3x factory output and not worry about it, and keep it for 20 years with the same engine at 200k miles then the fluids must remain absolutely sterile.

 

Are you chasing the lope of a cam or performance?

If performance, there are still supercharger kits available for these cars at a reasonable price. No opening of the engine needed.

 

I want to be clear I am not against opening an engine or discouraging this pathway, modding engines is necessary to learn.
Always perform cam swaps, engine cleaning, internal smoothing of passages'porting', oil pump mods, drainbacks, etc... and also inside transmission of choice, pump mods, new feeds, and think clearly 'is this drum going to be spinning in neutral for long periods at elevated rpm and what am i doing to do about it' about how the parts work and utilize energy from fuel, energy which could be destructive if not channeled properly to the tires and released as heat

The context here is what I Am against, all of this is related to this situation
With novices
-letting others do these things for you. Nobody will do it the way you would
-starting out with an expensive engine in a car you want to drive daily

it is this logic
A. if I let somebody do it for me, even if they mean well, they could still contaminate the engine. Better to wait until I am ready to do the job myself be sure its done clean.
B. If I want to learn about engines, I should use a cheap easy replace engine with low cost. I will make mistakes some will cause engine rebuilds.

Don't modify a vehicle in a way you do not understand if its the daily driver you really want to drive frequently
Suggest buying two identical cars if this is the case, modify just one