vertC6

I think the saying goes you can't leave good enough alone. Well a year after finishing my car I decided I wanted a little more.

I was doing my heads last year when I found some issues with the stock cam and lifters and kinda rushed into putting in a cam. The cam I chose was nearly stock, basically just adding more intake duration (220/232 120+3). Here is the link to my original build

https://www.corvetteforum.com/forums...e-details.html

The car drove perfect and made good power 520 & 510 tq, but after a year of driving the car, and going to some car meets around Houston I realized I should have gone bigger with the cam because I wanted the cam sound and a stronger mid range power band. However, I still did not want to give up any drive ability for a little extra power.

I wanted something that made strong mid range torque, and not something that makes most of it's power at 7k rpms, but more mid range. I spend 99.9% of my time below 6500 rpm so that was my focus with this cam. I always loved the dyno graphs of the torquer 110 but it's a little to rough for me at 12 degrees overlap. The 116 is really not a torquer cam because it closes the intake at 46 (same as stock) where the 110 closes at 40 (to build more dynamic compression and make more torque for those not familiar with valve events). I decided to do a custom spec so I went with a 224/240 115+4 (2 degrees of overlap at .050. IVO 1 BTDC IVC 43 ABDC EVO 1 ATDC EVC 59 BBDC. The actual cam card came back at IVC at 42.6 which I was happy with. I went ahead and added an ATI 10% UD pulley while I was doing the swap.

I took my car back to SeriousHP in Houston for a touch up tune, and as I stated before to anyone in the area these guys are the best shop I have every worked with and I have been to a lot of shops over the years, I highly recommend them!

All in all I was very happy with the results, I was hoping to have a little more peak torque but as you will see on the graph the torque hits 500lbs at 3800 rpm and maintains past 5700. Final numbers were 549rwhp 518rwtq, but most importantly is drives the same as before. Has a nice little lope driving around town, and no bucking or surging. Here is the graph and the final dyno run.

vertC6

Dyno Graph

Jayfabs

vertC6

Oh and I forgot to mention the most important thing I checked my mold start 90 guides after 4500 mile with the Yella Terra rockers, and they were rock-solid. Just the tiniest amount of play which is within spec.

Dan_the_C5_Man

Very cool. If I was doing a cam I'd ask you to sell me the one you just pulled.

vertC6

I actually sold it to another member already, how's you car running?

TXGS507

Very nice... Congrats on new numbers...

jayyyw

Awesome man. I want to do a new cam but man is it a PITA to do. I'll be installing an ATI 10% UD and am really thinking about it since I'll be 60% of the way there already.

vertC6

More like 85%

jayyyw

Rough estimate, lol.

danziger

Love that torque curve!

roastin300

Nice curves! I prefer leaving 20 peak whp on the table, picking up 30+ wtq everywhere else and not dealing with the driveability issues when using a smaller cam rather than a high rpm peak power cam. And this is coming from a professional tuner that can handle the big cams.

In many cases, the slightly smaller/torquey cam will actually be faster in the 1/4 mile if that's what your into. It definitely helps out of the corners on the road course as well.

Congrats!

vertC6

My thoughts exactly! I am not one to do a lot of freeway runs risking tickets, or worse jail time, so mainly my car is just for running around town having fun with it. I drive pretty aggressive so I want that mid range torque, and yet still have perfect manners when driving through parking lots.

I too have been in big cam cars before and I don't care for how the car behaves in everyday street driving. When you look at dyno graph's of bigger cams the suck down low and don't make power until 5k rpm.

lamboworld

vertC6

I never asked if these were the corrected numbers, I know it was about 70 degrees and low humidity when he did the dyno runs. 5% smoothing on the graph.

ssbowtie1

Great build. Was this a cam motion cam? What did you set the lift at? Did you still run the YT rockers?

vertC6

Yes cam motion, 224/240 115+4 .630/.612 and yes with the YTs and PSI1511 springs.

Da Z06

Great results and glad you got the results you wanted out of your project.

In regards to your comments on the "big cam" I will have to politely disagree.

Attached is my dyno sheet. Fairly large cam with 27.5 degrees of overlap.

Makes at least 500RWHP by 4300 (earlier than your smaller cam), and makes at least your peak RWHP from 5300 and over 600 still by 7300.

Down low matches or exceeds your HP/TQ by 3000.

I would not say that a large cam with a well thought out combo is soft anywhere.

Congrats on your new combo, like you I went back and changed a few things!!

vertC6

That graph look great, are you running an MSD?

However, when you compare each graph you do make less power (mainly tq.) from 3k to 5k. You can clearly see the dip in torque at 4k. I am a little over 500 where you are at 460ish and we are pretty close to the same at 4.5k and you pull away at 5k.

On the hp we are the same at 3k but I jump 30rwhp at 4k rpm at 5k we are pretty even and then you take off from there with the scavenging effect.

I am sure there is not much difference in lag vs my car when actually driving on the street, but the smaller cam is stronger in the mid range. Thanks for posting!

roastin300

Example of a customer I have:

Guy was running a custom cam I put together and had ground for him (226/242). I then thoroughly tuned the vehicle to a perfect result everywhere. Car ran and drove beautifully and was running low 10's 1/4 mile (drag race guy).

He wanted more and I advised against it, but still spec'd out a new/bigger cam for him (246/258), kept lift the same, and lobe profiles were the same. I did my best to optimize a balance of the valve events between the 2 based on the difference in duration.

I am a professional tuner, and was able to get the big cam to behave reasonable on the street but not nearly as enjoyable to drive as the smaller cam.

The end result, the bigger cam made 25whp more at redline (7200rpm), but lost between 10-30 foot lbs of torque (this is HP here as well) almost everywhere below 5400 rpm. Went to the track and was consistently 3-4 tenths SLOWER.

I integrated the area under the HP and torque curves between 3000 and 7200 RPM and the smaller cam produced approximately 8% MORE.

Needless to say, we swapped the old cam back in because the car was faster and much easier and more enjoyable to drive on the street ha ha ha

Everyone is entitled to their own opinions though. I am just speaking from my experience (this is just 1 example).