If the lift and duration are roughly the same.

One specs out to 114 lobe angle

The other says it has 109/119 lobe centers.

Is the 114 just the average of the 109/119?

Some more engine notes...
402 BB
I'm looking at the Performer Plus cam from Edelbrock. I'm running a very low compression, probably 8 or 8.5 to 1. So I'm hoping to regain some dynamic compression by going to the 114 lobe angle vs something like a 110.

The intake will be changed from the Torquer II to a Performer.
Headers, 049 heads. Everything else is pretty much stock and recent rebuilt. (before I got the car).

Usage will be street/towing (It's an El Camino).
A pass down the drag strip will just be for grins and not to set any records.

I hope this makes some sense.
Thanks,
Dan

A quick reply------

Both cams are on 114 LSA. The 109/119 one is ground 5* advanced, which is good.
As far as dynamic compression is concerned, the 110 LSA will have MORE dynamic compression than the 114 LSA---It closes the intake valve earlier, and this increases the dynamic compression. You close the intake valve later to LOWER the dynamic compression.

UDHarold

Thanks Harold for the reply. I value your opinion.
Sounds like I have my info wrong.

Can you recommend a cam (or specs to look for) that would work well for street and towing. Get decent gas mileage. Make my 8-1 compression ratio wake up a bit.

I'm currently looking at this Edelbrok cam.
Performer Plus Cam
292/302 500/500 114 LSA.

If I modifiy this with a 110 LSA would these specs work for my solution? Perhaps less duration?

Thanks,
Dan

Here are some of the Cams I'm looking at.

They all are about the same but I'm leaning towards these two.

The Energizer because it was recommended to me (and it's a good price). Or spend a little more and get the Xtreem Energy with the differing int/exh durations and lift perhaps spreading the powerband and getting a bit more down low for towing and gas mileage.

Speaking of gas Mileage. If this cam/intake change goes well, I may end up putting on fuel injection and overdrive trans. There, I've spilled the beans and possibly muddied up the waters again.

http://teamgracer.com/cars/Elcamino/CamOptions.jpg

Dan10101,

The Comp Cams is way too big for what you want to do.
Here is what I recommend, available through Summit or Jeg's.
Lunati 60201 VooDoo---256/262@seat, 213/219@.050, .515"/.530", 112 LSA.
Lunati 302A4LUN-------272/272@.0045, 217/217@.050, .515"/.515", 112 LSA.
Although the 302A4 and the Crane Energizer seem to have the same numbers, the last time I compared the two (in SBCs) you can see the physical difference in lift curves---The 302A4 is much fatter up high. I have used this one since 1982, and I has been my favorite Duallie cam, giving 8.5-9.5 MPG in a 454 Duallie pulling a 28' race car trailer, with race car. Gives 12-13 MPG with trailer unhooked, at least 21" of vacuum.
The VooDoo should be even better in low-end, and probably best for EFI.
Mileage is not a known word with cams over 220* at .050"........ Or 110 LSAs.

UDHarold

Aw com'on Sir, I'm trying to tune to 17mpg with the 243/251 @.050 cam in a 440 ci! :)

Dan10101,

The Comp Cams is way too big for what you want to do.
Here is what I recommend, available through Summit or Jeg's.
Lunati 60201 VooDoo---256/262@seat, 213/219@.050, .515"/.530", 112 LSA.
Lunati 302A4LUN-------272/272@.0045, 217/217@.050, .515"/.515", 112 LSA.
Although the 302A4 and the Crane Energizer seem to have the same numbers, the last time I compared the two (in SBCs) you can see the physical difference in lift curves---The 302A4 is much fatter up high. I have used this one since 1982, and I has been my favorite Duallie cam, giving 8.5-9.5 MPG in a 454 Duallie pulling a 28' race car trailer, with race car. Gives 12-13 MPG with trailer unhooked, at least 21" of vacuum.
The VooDoo should be even better in low-end, and probably best for EFI.
Mileage is not a known word with cams over 220* at .050"........ Or 110 LSAs.

UDHarold

Thanks for the suggestions.
I guess I'll never understand LSAs and compression... But, I'm learning bit by bit.

I'll check out the 2 you mentioned.
Thanks,
Dan

Aw com'on Sir, I'm trying to tune to 17mpg with the 243/251 @.050 cam in a 440 ci! :)

Good luck ;)

So with my 402 I should be good for 18mpg right? :D


(I just don't want to be stuck in single digits the rest of my life, unless it's my golf handicap..)

Harold, thanks again for the suggestions.
I went with this one. It was backordered, but shipped early.
Lunati 60201 VooDoo---256/262@seat, 213/219@.050, .515"/.530", 112 LSA.

Unfortunatly, after pulling it apart, I spent the week in the hospital, and still have some recovery to do before I can spend much time on my feet. I have a head off and it had a small dome piston. I bought some clay to do a mold so I can CC it and find out what the volume is. The head is cavernous, so I suspect it is a stock 121CC 049 head. But I'll CC it too. No porting work done.

I also checked the cam and it looks to have a lift of about .375 or so. Is this possible? If anyone can point me to a procedure to do this, I can double check my work.

When doing calcuations, what deck height should I use? How can I measure it?

Thanks,
Dan

If you have a stock motor, the piston should have approx .180-.188 dome. Factory these are listed as 19.8CC. Stock piston/deck is .020. Personally, if you have one head off, I would yank the other head also and get them cut .030 - you won't even miss it. Use the .039 thick head gasket, your CR will finish up about 9.0/1. If the block deck is real clean you could use the GM parts .022 steel shim gasket w/ copper spray sealer for another .1-.2 increase, probably not worth the risk of failure on a 35 year old original deck surface though if the deck has signs of corrosion.

I dont think you can cut a head that much....machinist told me .020 was the max.

OK..

Cut your heads .020" and then use the .020" steel shim headgaskets. (They were used stock back then too).

And while you are at it, do a quick bowl-blend and dingle-berry casting flash port clean up on your heads.. Nothing fancy, but every littler bit helps..

pdq67

I checked the engine rebuild receipt and the heads were cleaned/cut. What would be a standard cleaning cut? .008 was one head that I had done. (4cyl).

I have coper coat, I may just throw it back together (after checking everything) with the .020 head gaskets and see how it responds to the new cam and intake.

Dan

Harold, thanks again for the suggestions.
I went with this one. It was backordered, but shipped early.
Lunati 60201 VooDoo---256/262@seat, 213/219@.050, .515"/.530", 112 LSA.

Unfortunatly, after pulling it apart, I spent the week in the hospital, and still have some recovery to do before I can spend much time on my feet. I have a head off and it had a small dome piston. I bought some clay to do a mold so I can CC it and find out what the volume is. The head is cavernous, so I suspect it is a stock 121CC 049 head. But I'll CC it too. No porting work done.

I also checked the cam and it looks to have a lift of about .375 or so. Is this possible? If anyone can point me to a procedure to do this, I can double check my work.

When doing calcuations, what deck height should I use? How can I measure it?

Thanks,
Dan
=
You don't need a mold, just lower the piston .5" into the bore, fill it with your fluid from a graduated container & note how much it takes.
Now, Bore*Bore*.500*.7854 is the volume that the cylinder should hold in cu. inches
cu inches * 16.39 = cc's
This volume less what you put in is the dome volume.

It sounds like you measured the lift at the lobe??
This * 1.7 is your valve lift.
If you measured it at the valve was the lifter full of oil?

The "deck height" can be measured with a straight edge & feeler gauges with reasonable accuracy.
Rock the piston all the way to the exhaust side, take a measurement on the flat at the top.
Rock the piston all the way to the intake side & take another.
Divide by two & this is your deck height or very close to it.
You will find it may vary all over the map if the block has not been decked square to the mains (stock engines are sometime very bad for this, especially side to side & end to end)

I dont think you can cut a head that much....machinist told me .020 was the max.
=
Really???
Respectfully I would be asking why??
I just cut .060" off a set of "049's for a customer that cc'd at 122
They are now 112cc's
I have angle milled well over .100" off of both big & small block heads before.
Recently milled a set of 18° heads to 17°. this is over 130 thou,,,,

The limiting factor is the intake seat. If you remove part of it your intake valve will not be happy :D

You can normally cut about .030 combined from the block & head before you run into intake issues.
After this you will need to address the intake side of the head.

And with heavy cuts you may need to address the "china wall" (ends of block) or the bottom of the intake.

Mike, I think that's all he wanted to take off w/o doing anything esle. Would more than .020 require other mods?

Mike, I think that's all he wanted to take off w/o doing anything esle. Would more than .020 require other mods?
=
Yep, anything more & I would probably want to cut the intake face of the head too.

I measured the cam lift at the lifter body, (not the pushrod pocket). It came to about .220.

.220 x 1.7 = 3.75

I did it a couple times and don't see any unusual wear on the cam.

I guess I just wanted to see if maybe the stock smog cams went down that small for lift.

Is there a writeup on cam lift checking and duration somewhere on the web?

Anyone know of a resource for stock cam specifications?


Right now I'm calculating my CR at 8.6:1 with what I know so far.

If I take an additional .020 for a total of .030 off the head I would have about 8.8 according to my compression calculator. I'm not sure that would be a noticable difference.

Does that sound about right?

Thanks for your reponses.
Dan

UPDATE

Further calculations and reality has set in. I'm figuring CR at 8:1 or less.
7.88:1 is one calculation with the 049 heads (121 cc)
I've decided to upgrade the heads to a set of 215s.
With no other changes going to the 215 heads (101cc) the calculator gives me 9.23:1

OK, now my question is, will the Voodoo cam that I bought still work with the higher compression? Compression is still pretty low so I think it's low enough to work good on the street. I think I just answered my own question. Thanks for listening.

Lunati 60201 VooDoo---256/262@seat, 213/219@.050, .515"/.530", 112 LSA.

At least this way I'll be able to recoup some of the cost by selling off the 049s. Shaving heads and intake manifolds just didn't do the job for me.

Can't wait to get this running again.

You might want to throw a little clay on top of those pistons, rotate the engine over by hand, and check for interference between those closed chamber heads and the piston dome in various areas. Probably won't be an issue but just for safety's sake I'd check anyway.

Randy

Stock cam should be .398"/.430" lift is all..

Little-bitty bugger!!

pdq67

pdq67 - That's the cam we decided it was. Looking forward to the Lunati.

Randy - I was planning on doing another clay test with the 'new' heads. It has about a 10cc dome so we'll make sure.
Actually, I guess I need to install the new cam to make sure the lift isn't a problem.

According to info I have, the .530" should be the MAX OK for those heads and stock valves. As always, I recommend you check.
That cam is very well liked......

UDHarold

Dan,
I have a 69 427 with 122cc open chamber heads (8.5:1cr) and I'm running a PAW cam - 204/214@.050, .476/.501 lift, 112 cl. Ran this in a 79 Camaro with a Q-jet, headers, 3.08 gears and a 4 speed. Throttle response was Brutal! and I got 18 mpg. Same motor in a 68 impala / turbo 350 / 3.36 gears went 14.4 @ 95 (had more potential - needed further strip tunning). Great motor and dead nuts reliable.

I can believe this!!

The 204/214 Performer cam in whatever engine if the CR. is low enough, (8 to 1??), will really pick it up, imho!!

And I figure a 210/218 cam would pick a BB up even more at these Low CR. ranges!!

Only b/c of STROKE!!

pdq67

It's Alive! (I think you’re supposed to say that)

Sorry this is LONG... These are my notes from yesterday. Skip to the next message for todays notes.

After many weeks/months of stumbling around and much help from my Son, we finally have it running again. We did a break-in last night for about 10 minutes before we shut it down to check out a hot header/engine and cold water temp gauge. Another 10-15 minutes tonight and we should be gold.

Here's how the initial startup went:

Adjusted valves and then liberally applied the remaining Lunati molly lube to the cam using a brush ( careful not to leave any horse hairs )

Left the balancer mark on TDC #1 and installed the intake manifold.
Oil = Shell Rotella T 15-40
"assembly lube" = GM EOS
Pumped up 20-30 PSI of oil pressure with tired out and now wasted drill.
Primed the now 7 month dry carb with an electric fuel pump to see if it leaked. It did. I took it apart and cleaned a needle and seat. Some general cleaning, reassembly, retest and no more leaking. I left it full of gas for the startup. I also cranked up the idle speed about 2 turns.

We had some problems with the HEI dist low voltage wiring. But, much molly lube and proper lubricants, I'm sure it is fine. Need to find a 3 wire pigtail somewhere. Timing and firing order were right on.

Once running, we quickly timed it by ear until we knew it was close and stable, then set the timing to 36 degrees.

There was a buildup either in the exhaust, coolant, oil or something that took a couple minutes to burn out. Then the exhaust was clean.

Lifters pumped up almost immediately and smoothed out.
Varied the rpm from 1800 to 2500 for about 10 minutes.
I noticed that the headers were glowing red. I felt that it may be too lean with the changes to the system. I'm only running 65 jets in the primaries, (stock for the 670 Holley). I closed the choke slightly until the engine started to stumble then backed it off a bit. After a few seconds the headers cooled a bit.

At this time we felt that we were getting conflicting coolant temp readings. The gauge was reading about 150 (no thermostat) and based on experience, we felt the engine was hotter than that. So we shut it down. It was getting late and decided to give the neighbors a break from the 3” flowmasters and turndowns.

Tomorrow, we'll add another thermometer. We’ll check the plugs to see how lean/rich it's running. Then we'll hook up the LM1 wideband to see what we're actually getting for air/fuel ratio.

In reading "red hot headers" posts, I see that on no load startup the dist needs to be advanced even more. I'll try that and see if that helps the hot header situation. I'd rejet the carb, but it seems that that is a wrong move until we can get a load on the cartruck.

More...

---- Today ----

Checked the plugs, they look ok.
Water and oil are ok too.
Advanced the timing and had the timing light ready when it started.
Couldn’t find the LM1, so we press on…

Started right up and adjusted the idle to run above 2k.
Set the timing to about 50 degrees advanced.
That seemed to smooth out the engine and the headers never got real hot. I noticed just a very faint glow from # 8. I closed the choke slightly and taped it in place.

Ran it for about 12-15 minutes and then shut her down. Remember it already ran 10 minutes. It was still up in the air so I carefully went under to drain the oil and change the filter. It looks like I’ll be needing an oil pan sometime in the future, this one had a fight with a rock or something and another hit like that will rip it open. It’s not deformed, so for now it works.

I added some more Rotella T and another bottle of EOS. I figure the next oil change I’ll switch to a racing synthetic. I still have another bottle of EOS so I’ll add 4 oz to the next 4 oil changes.

Finally after 7 months on stands it’s back on the ground!

The quick drive told me that I still need to work over the carb. The primaries are working, but the secondaries are having problems. I need to find a carb kit for a Street Avenger 670. Either that or find a rebuildable 780 and put my money into that.

Can exhaust get louder with compression and cam change? It sure seems so. There is a slight tappet noise that we can sometimes hear over the exhaust. The throttle is VERY responsive. Can't wait to finish tuning this baby.

Thanks all for your help. I'll update again once it's running properly.
Oh, I did remember to reset the timing back to 36.
Dan

69-CVL,you asked would more than .020 require other mods?

This is what Mike/W said:

You can normally cut about .030 combined from the block & head before you run into intake issues. After this you will need to address the intake side of the head.

I hope you plan on running super unleaded. Over 9:1 with iron heads and that small cam will likely get you into detonation under load at lower RPM's. Timing will be pretty critical. An adjustable vacuum advance will help a bunch. I built a 383 for my suburban with more duration than you have, and 9.2:1. Had to use the adj. vacuum advance, would still ping under load at times unless I ran 92+ octane. JMHO.

Thanks for the heads up,
I didn't get any detonation on the test drive, but we kept it pretty light footed. Once we get the carb dialed in, we can play with the distributor and put it on the good side of the edge. We can run low/mid/high grade, whatever is necessary.

I guess I never posted this information.
The pistons are about .035 down in the hole. We calculated a hair under 9:1 with .020 steel headgaskets. I didn't want to go thicker because I read that quench should be around .040 and we're at .055 or so as it sits.

Reviving this thread with a dyno update.

Spend 3 hours at the dyno shop this morning doing some tuning.
I'm happy with the number and performace in general.

HP at the wheels was 297 @ 5100 rpm
Torque at the wheels was 343 @ 4000 rpm

I'm calculating a loss of 25% with Turbo 400 and 12 bolt posi.
Puts me at 395 hp and 457 tq.

Seems a bit high, but I'm not complaning. Power everywhere feels good except for off the line. I think most of that is the smallish vaccum secondary carb and no stall torque converter.

calculated crank numbers
rpm.........HP........Torque
3000.......231.......409
3500.......296........444
4000.......349........457
4500.......365........424
5000.......395........409
5500.......364........355