Power

[colt45 gto]

could a set of throttle bodies be made for these?

i agree fully with GTwizard on the adjustable cam gears, without high lift cams they are pointless. adjustables ONLY come into their own when high lift (fast road, mild road, mild race and race) cams are used. you need them to dial the valve timing in perfectly.

if someone could manufacture an intake manifold to hold a bank of throttle bodies, then i think this would push the N/A platform to higher hights especially if they are mated to a motor thats been blue printed with 285 cams and high comp pistons, ported intake and exhaust ports, big valves, lightened flywheel and ballanced crank. i'm sure the N/A guys will see a huge difference and better 1/4 times than ever before.

there is so much scope with the N/A that the forced induction guys dont see and the N/A's rev quicker than the forced inductions too.

[SOHC]

Adjustable cam gears give no power at all. You miss understand. If you timing is slightly off than you have less power. All these adjustable cam gears do is let you correct any timing issues you may have. Therefore bringing your horse power back were it should be. If you have no timing issues (NA or Turbo) than adjustable cam gears do nothing for you. Now if in fact you decide to make adjustments to your timing for the purpose of some possable power gains, and you have some of the supporting hardware to support said power gains, than yes, you can squeeze a little more out of what ever set up you have. Just remember, clocking those adjustable cams to 3 retard exhaust and 1 advanced intake will do nothing for you if you have not used a degree wheel first to find 0 anyways. This is a must. or the adjustable gears may just be a waist if time. The reason I run adjusable cam gears is so I can adjust my exhaust cams to take advantage of my long tube headers and tune the cams to the headers. Once this is done you can tune your intake cams to make most of what ever type of intake and runner set up you have. This needs to be done on a dyno. I have not done so yet and I do have my intakes at 1adv and exhaust at 3 rtd. So far I am at 229.7 HP with my 3.0 (.020 over) and other mods. Was it the cam gears, cams, intake or headers that got me here? Let me answer that for you. It is all of it as a package working together as a unit.

I got lightweight cam gears for the SOHC, but I have yet to install them. I would think that they should help the car rev a bit quicker and maybe help low end? Any change in rotational mass should help put some power to the wheels at least in theory. Any thoughts?

[colt45 gto]

I got lightweight cam gears for the SOHC, but I have yet to install them. I would think that they should help the car rev a bit quicker and maybe help low end? Any change in rotational mass should help put some power to the wheels at least in theory. Any thoughts?

it will not make much difference at all, lightened flywheel wil let the engine rev freely and quickly same as a lighter underdrive pully, cam gears just turn its the actual flywheel that takes most of the centrifugal force. a heavy flywheel willhelp in higher rpm's but doesn't help in engine braking, it gets spinning and takes some of the weight and stress from the motor. cam gears will make no difference to how a motor spins up.

to add from my previous post...
these are made for a ford v6 i'm sure it wouldn't be hard to fabricate a manifolt to accept these with a cover over the top.

[GTwizard]

I was looking into ITBs and at this time have set the idea aside. There was a ton of race teams that went from single plenum to ITB's and found a little more power and a lot more throttle responce. But these are guys that run in and above 9000 RPM range. As I began looking into the ITBs I found that most of those guys that went ITB are back to single plenum/single throttle body. Honda, Acura, and Toyota just to name a few. Go figure. It has to do with drivability. ITB are not good for drags and not good for street. They are best for all out road race conditions. The cost is way too high and that does not include what you would need to do to your motor to take adventage of the ITBs ability to deliver. These also require full stand alone engine management with speed density tuning. This is all high, high, high dollars race only application performance upgrades. In the end, even if I won the big lotto, ITB would never end up in My 3000GT. Although I might consider them on the NSX I would be running. LOL. There is still a ton of work to be done with the NA before running to ITB, and a bunch more fun to be had.

[TUFFTR]

With the adjustable cam gears on my 3.5L set to the standard -3 +1 It made a heap of difference. Before, The car felt great around 3-5500RPM and by 6300RPM it was like you were choking a chicken. adjusted the cam gears and WOW. the car revved to 6800-6900RPM and when it was there, didn't sound ANYWHERE near as choked/blocked up (so to say) as it did before when topping out at 6300RPM. Of course I'm always tinkering with the tune, but yeah, if you went 3.5L, that'd be the first thing I'd do. Before the cam gears were in, I was getting beaten JUST by LS1's. Now with the gears adjusted I have that extra few RPM to pull away from them, It'd great

Also, powerband feels so linear aswell. pulls to almost 7000 with the same power from 3000 all the way to 7000RPM. One day I will degree them in properly but I just dont have the knowledge on how to do that yet.


Now, question to those in the "know" Camshafts for my 3.5L. I want regrinds to keep the cost down. I want a mean grind. something with huge mid and top range. I make just under 200HP atw's now (probably a bit over 200HP now with the gears adjusted) and I'd like to see another 10-15 atw's with the camshafts. I want as big as i can go before needing a valve spring kit.

Street/race grind? Or a race grind?

[GTwizard]

Cams. Before you look at cams, you need to do springs. You are already reaching Valve float. A much more agresive cam grind will cause those heavy stock valves to open at a much grater speed than before and they will want keep going LOL. and on the closing side of the ramp, the rate is so fast, the valve will be slow to react and you could even drop a rocker. Spring will help keep your valve time presice. With out good spring rates your valve trane timing will get really sloppy and at an RPM range much less than what you are running now.. Extream duration cams need high compression. lower comp motor need high lift. That was an issue I had last year. I was trying to run endurance racing cams, but did not have the compression todo so. My valve trane will handle any and all cam grinds and at RPMs I could most likely never reach. But I did this so I could test mutiple crazy ass grinds. You should do well with the cams that I run. HKS 272s intake and exhaust. But, with out springs to back it up, your waisting your time. I also run extreem light weight valves to insure no valve trane slop at all. Springs and Valves are not that expensive. It is a good port and polish that runs into time and money. You should also remember that the shape of the valves has a lot to do with the amount of air that can get around them. It will be your heads that make real power. After we had our heads done, even our stock cams felt huge. Low end responce was nuts and would rev till the fuel shut down.. Did not go with better cams untill we had a set up that could take advantage of more lift and more duration. You might even consider VR4heads as they flow a little better. For the power you are looking for, it time to cosider your next step as completing a package. Heads, cams, valves and spring need to be done all at once. To try and do this in a peace meal fastion or one step at a time could just lessen the power you already have. Or at least be a disapointment.

[TUFFTR]

Cams. Before you look at cams, you need to do springs. You are already reaching Valve float. A much more agresive cam grind will cause those heavy stock valves to open at a much grater speed than before and they will want keep going LOL. and on the closing side of the ramp, the rate is so fast, the valve will be slow to react and you could even drop a rocker. Spring will help keep your valve time presice. With out good spring rates your valve trane timing will get really sloppy and at an RPM range much less than what you are running now.. Extream duration cams need high compression. lower comp motor need high lift. That was an issue I had last year. I was trying to run endurance racing cams, but did not have the compression todo so. My valve trane will handle any and all cam grinds and at RPMs I could most likely never reach. But I did this so I could test mutiple crazy ass grinds. You should do well with the cams that I run. HKS 272s intake and exhaust. But, with out springs to back it up, your waisting your time. I also run extreem light weight valves to insure no valve trane slop at all. Springs and Valves are not that expensive. It is a good port and polish that runs into time and money. You should also remember that the shape of the valves has a lot to do with the amount of air that can get around them. It will be your heads that make real power. After we had our heads done, even our stock cams felt huge. Low end responce was nuts and would rev till the fuel shut down.. Did not go with better cams untill we had a set up that could take advantage of more lift and more duration. You might even consider VR4heads as they flow a little better. For the power you are looking for, it time to cosider your next step as completing a package. Heads, cams, valves and spring need to be done all at once. To try and do this in a peace meal fastion or one step at a time could just lessen the power you already have. Or at least be a disapointment.

Wow thanks for the great reply!
I have a set of VR4 heads here in fantastic nick I can use if need be. I Don't mind stockpiling parts over a while and then put them in all in one go. it's running 10:1 compression now. I know of a SOHC 74 24v with huge ported heads and 294 degree camshafts in it, balanced motor etc and that made 254.79HP!!!! (190kw atw's)
I'd like to get it to around 220HP atw's ultimately. That set of VR4 heads I have here I may look into some port and polishing for them to get done. Looking for a P/T job atm during uni to mainly save but a few mods on the side

Springs and valves I will have to keep a look out for 2nd hand as brand new I just cant afford it.

Is there a certain port job you would recommend? A basic one, mild one or insane one? as they say do it once do it right.
Appreciate the valuable advice. I won't be able to afford it RIGHT now but I can save save save.

[x2percentmilk]

Theres alot of false info that floats around the internet, especially with something like N/A tuning where not alot of people have solid numbers to go off of. This is a huge bit of good information that most of us can agree puts to rest the "what single upgrade helped your N/A the greatest?" question. I can bet alot of us here would rather do things right then waste our time and money on something that wont matter or will destroy our cars.

Cams. Before you look at cams, you need to do springs. You are already reaching Valve float. A much more agresive cam grind will cause those heavy stock valves to open at a much grater speed than before and they will want keep going LOL. and on the closing side of the ramp, the rate is so fast, the valve will be slow to react and you could even drop a rocker. Spring will help keep your valve time presice. With out good spring rates your valve trane timing will get really sloppy and at an RPM range much less than what you are running now.. Extream duration cams need high compression. lower comp motor need high lift. That was an issue I had last year. I was trying to run endurance racing cams, but did not have the compression todo so. My valve trane will handle any and all cam grinds and at RPMs I could most likely never reach. But I did this so I could test mutiple crazy ass grinds. You should do well with the cams that I run. HKS 272s intake and exhaust. But, with out springs to back it up, your waisting your time. I also run extreem light weight valves to insure no valve trane slop at all. Springs and Valves are not that expensive. It is a good port and polish that runs into time and money. You should also remember that the shape of the valves has a lot to do with the amount of air that can get around them. It will be your heads that make real power. After we had our heads done, even our stock cams felt huge. Low end responce was nuts and would rev till the fuel shut down.. Did not go with better cams untill we had a set up that could take advantage of more lift and more duration. You might even consider VR4heads as they flow a little better. For the power you are looking for, it time to cosider your next step as completing a package. Heads, cams, valves and spring need to be done all at once. To try and do this in a peace meal fastion or one step at a time could just lessen the power you already have. Or at least be a disapointment.

To pose a new question to everyone, ive been looking into fuel control. From what I can tell a VR4 pump with the stock NA injectors should hold ground, at most maybe some of us might need stock vr4 injectors, but what about fuel control?

As my car is my daily driver i've been looking into the SAFCII as it has 2 tunes for low and high throttle. My gas mileage right now is no where near what id like it to be, so I figure thats where the low throttle tune comes in, as I can lean the mixture out as much as possible up until say, 3500 rpsm which i barely reach at 5th gear cruising on the highway. Then I assume the high throttle value we want to tune for 14.7 afr, or do we want to go as lean as possible without knock and timing changes? What happens in the "middle" throttle? Was my gas mileage assumption correct? Also, is exhaust gas temp needed if a good wideband is being used?

I feel like alot of people know these answers from tuning experience, so given that I have none, id figured id ask

[Adam7]

Also intrested in what the safc can provide.

[GTwizard]

Just spent a hour responding to all your qestions and they got lost. Don't know what happened. I will try again tomorrow. Must be my sat uplink. But damn that was a lot of writing. I don't know if I can remember all that I wrote. And it was good too. LOl.