this is a VERY short story about learning things the hard way
back around 1968 -1971 or so I had a bunch of car crazy friends, whos main twin goals were having a fast car and of course an even faster girl friend, well Im going to leave the girl part out here!
anyway
Larry owned a 1963 impalla with a 350 sbc he had built with 11:1 compression pistons and a 4 speed muncie, this was before the 383 build was almost mandatory and 350 builds were considered hot stuff.
Tom owned a 1966 chevelle with a 350 hp396 and a 4 speed , these were fairly low compression big blocks but they ran decent, especially with headers and a bigger cam.
I owned a 1965 lemans with a 427 corvette engine,and a 4 speed muncie, that I had dumped a ton of money into and had it stroked to a 496 displacement.(read the link below)
this is mostly about Larry trying to keep up,with his sbc having only 350 cubic inches , because we had larger (396)and much larger (496)displacement engines
now LARRY obviously had the slower car, because it was fairly heavy and had a smaller engine, we suggested He swap to a 427 BIG BLOCK, but Larry was convinced he could get the sbc to run with the big blocks, remember this was the time frame when the small block vega pro stock cars were running low 10s and very high 9 second times, and Larry was not all that happy about it, so he decided he was going to need to build the car up so it was faster, the first step was installing 4.11:1 rear gears and the largest tires that would fit in the car and it did result in the car being slightly faster
Larry would read some magazine article and find out some guy with a low 10 second car was running cam (X) FROM SUPPLIER (Y) and instantly think that was what he needed, TOM and I both pointed out that a race car that weighed in at easily 1200 lbs less could obviously run different cams and rear gears, but that NEVER sunk into Larrys thoughts
next he bought some crane reworked cylinder heads, I think if I remember correctly they were called "FIREBALL HEADS" BACK THEN,and he added headers, the car was even faster and while his 350 impalla would not keep up with my lemans, with its much larger 496 BBC, it was almost as fast as the stock 396 chevelle so Tom, not wanting to see Larrys tail lights, invested in an L88 cam and lifters, and valve springs At the local chevy parts counter which we installed and we added headers because there was no way Tom, was going to let a 350 sbc beat him,and while toms car only got a bit faster it sounded really mean, with the new cam and headers.
Larry who had been getting closer, now seemed to be loosing ground
so he went to crane cams and they suggested the SSH-310 cam and new valve springs and headers
but larry , being LARRY, looked at the catalog , and thought to himself if the SSh-310 is good the SSh330 has got to be even better
now tom and I strongly suggested he go with the suggested SSh310, because while we did not know a great deal about cams at the time we did know the guy at crane had always given us good advice in the past, but larry purchased the SSh330 cam and installed it, and surprisingly the car did run a bit faster that it did with the stock cam, in fact once he added a z28 intake and 780 carb he got at a local swap meet, the car was running low-to mid 13 seconds which was as good as the 440 road runners and stock big block chevelles and camaros were doing, but remember hes running a 11:1 compression 350 with 4 speed, a better intake, headers, cam,and a 4.11:1 rear gear
at this point larry starts thinking , if that ssh330 was so good? why not jump up to an ssh350, yeah! that should do it!
now keep in mind back in the day, 40 years ago very few people checked clearances until something broke! most of us learn from mistakes we or our freinds made back then, and lets say magazine articles were even less trust worthy than to day at letting you in on all the true FACTS, they tended to skip over many factors and make it seem that just about anyone could install the cam,intake and headers they or the sponsor was promoting and run with the track heros, things like checking rocker geometry or clearances were not something the average guy understood or did untill something failed or forced him to look into why things didn,t run correctly, yes Larry, purchased and installed the new SSH-350 CRANE CAM,and the car sounded like a funny car at idle, it also ran high 15 second 1/4 mile times because it had very little low or mid rpm power, so after about two weeks he was forced to admit the cam was not helping and swapped back to the previous SSh 330 cam, having learned a lesson that bigger in cams is not always better....a lesson that was FURTHER brought home when that cam he re-installed with the used lifters, had a worn cam lobe in under 3 weeks time........so he goes back to crane and they still suggested the SSH310, larry decides to try it and the cars the fastest its every been as a result, larry actually beats tom at the track, (not by much but it took TOM a while to get over it)
LESSONS or why you should always pay attention to other peoples results when they build cars
your most likely not going to like a cam thats too large for the application
you need to know how to measure and why clearances are important
listening to guys with more experience seldom hurts
bigger is seldom better on a street car cam
re-using used lifters on a used cam with random lifter locations seldom works
Id bet 70% or more of the guys selecting performance cams for the first engine combo they build ,do so a bit like one of my friends (larry) always did in the 1960s, he would call ISKY, CRANE and CROWER get the tech guys to tell him the cam specs from each manufacturer after telling them about his car and then select the cam with the most duration and lift after comparing the cams from each manufacturer, that would have been BAD ENOUGH, but he also tended to tell the tech guys he had expensive aftermarket components he read about in magazine articles that he "INTENDED TO BUY LATER" not what he truly had on hand currently, the result was that I gained a great deal of experience learning about correcting valve train problems when either parts failed or the car ran like crap!
the truth is that the vast majority of guys select a performance cam for the 5% of the time they may race the car rather than the 95% of the time they spend driving the car, then wonder why it never seems to run correctly
if you post all the info about your engine and drive train I can help you a good deal, Id also suggest checking with several cam manufacturers and reading the links, where most guys go wrong is that they assume that if a certain cam ran reasonably well in some magazine article or in a friends car that that same cam will run great in their engine, the fact that the compression, displacement, intake, carb ,head flow, exhaust back pressure , the cars weight, rear gear, converter,stall speed, fuel octane, valve spring clearance, valve spring load rates, rocker ratio, and port cross sectional area, etc. are all wildly different never enters the discussion.
hanging out with LARRY described in the links when I was younger proved to be very educational, LARRY made dozens of serious mistakes, in fact it got to the point I discuss intended mods with larry and if he seemed rather enthusiastic about the mod I knew it was a huge RED FLAG, indicating a good deal more research was mandatory
viewtopic.php?f=38&t=898&p=1450#p1450
viewtopic.php?f=52&t=6687&p=21437#p21437
viewtopic.php?f=52&t=5078
viewtopic.php?f=52&t=82
viewtopic.php?f=52&t=181
viewtopic.php?f=52&t=4957
viewtopic.php?f=71&t=741
viewtopic.php?f=69&t=5123
viewtopic.php?f=87&t=3404&p=8992#p8992
http://garage.grumpysperformance.co...deli-that-i-had-not-seen-since-college.15074/
back around 1968 -1971 or so I had a bunch of car crazy friends, whos main twin goals were having a fast car and of course an even faster girl friend, well Im going to leave the girl part out here!
anyway
Larry owned a 1963 impalla with a 350 sbc he had built with 11:1 compression pistons and a 4 speed muncie, this was before the 383 build was almost mandatory and 350 builds were considered hot stuff.
Tom owned a 1966 chevelle with a 350 hp396 and a 4 speed , these were fairly low compression big blocks but they ran decent, especially with headers and a bigger cam.
I owned a 1965 lemans with a 427 corvette engine,and a 4 speed muncie, that I had dumped a ton of money into and had it stroked to a 496 displacement.(read the link below)
this is mostly about Larry trying to keep up,with his sbc having only 350 cubic inches , because we had larger (396)and much larger (496)displacement engines
now LARRY obviously had the slower car, because it was fairly heavy and had a smaller engine, we suggested He swap to a 427 BIG BLOCK, but Larry was convinced he could get the sbc to run with the big blocks, remember this was the time frame when the small block vega pro stock cars were running low 10s and very high 9 second times, and Larry was not all that happy about it, so he decided he was going to need to build the car up so it was faster, the first step was installing 4.11:1 rear gears and the largest tires that would fit in the car and it did result in the car being slightly faster
Larry would read some magazine article and find out some guy with a low 10 second car was running cam (X) FROM SUPPLIER (Y) and instantly think that was what he needed, TOM and I both pointed out that a race car that weighed in at easily 1200 lbs less could obviously run different cams and rear gears, but that NEVER sunk into Larrys thoughts
next he bought some crane reworked cylinder heads, I think if I remember correctly they were called "FIREBALL HEADS" BACK THEN,and he added headers, the car was even faster and while his 350 impalla would not keep up with my lemans, with its much larger 496 BBC, it was almost as fast as the stock 396 chevelle so Tom, not wanting to see Larrys tail lights, invested in an L88 cam and lifters, and valve springs At the local chevy parts counter which we installed and we added headers because there was no way Tom, was going to let a 350 sbc beat him,and while toms car only got a bit faster it sounded really mean, with the new cam and headers.
Larry who had been getting closer, now seemed to be loosing ground
so he went to crane cams and they suggested the SSH-310 cam and new valve springs and headers
but larry , being LARRY, looked at the catalog , and thought to himself if the SSh-310 is good the SSh330 has got to be even better
now tom and I strongly suggested he go with the suggested SSh310, because while we did not know a great deal about cams at the time we did know the guy at crane had always given us good advice in the past, but larry purchased the SSh330 cam and installed it, and surprisingly the car did run a bit faster that it did with the stock cam, in fact once he added a z28 intake and 780 carb he got at a local swap meet, the car was running low-to mid 13 seconds which was as good as the 440 road runners and stock big block chevelles and camaros were doing, but remember hes running a 11:1 compression 350 with 4 speed, a better intake, headers, cam,and a 4.11:1 rear gear
at this point larry starts thinking , if that ssh330 was so good? why not jump up to an ssh350, yeah! that should do it!
now keep in mind back in the day, 40 years ago very few people checked clearances until something broke! most of us learn from mistakes we or our freinds made back then, and lets say magazine articles were even less trust worthy than to day at letting you in on all the true FACTS, they tended to skip over many factors and make it seem that just about anyone could install the cam,intake and headers they or the sponsor was promoting and run with the track heros, things like checking rocker geometry or clearances were not something the average guy understood or did untill something failed or forced him to look into why things didn,t run correctly, yes Larry, purchased and installed the new SSH-350 CRANE CAM,and the car sounded like a funny car at idle, it also ran high 15 second 1/4 mile times because it had very little low or mid rpm power, so after about two weeks he was forced to admit the cam was not helping and swapped back to the previous SSh 330 cam, having learned a lesson that bigger in cams is not always better....a lesson that was FURTHER brought home when that cam he re-installed with the used lifters, had a worn cam lobe in under 3 weeks time........so he goes back to crane and they still suggested the SSH310, larry decides to try it and the cars the fastest its every been as a result, larry actually beats tom at the track, (not by much but it took TOM a while to get over it)
LESSONS or why you should always pay attention to other peoples results when they build cars
your most likely not going to like a cam thats too large for the application
you need to know how to measure and why clearances are important
listening to guys with more experience seldom hurts
bigger is seldom better on a street car cam
re-using used lifters on a used cam with random lifter locations seldom works
Id bet 70% or more of the guys selecting performance cams for the first engine combo they build ,do so a bit like one of my friends (larry) always did in the 1960s, he would call ISKY, CRANE and CROWER get the tech guys to tell him the cam specs from each manufacturer after telling them about his car and then select the cam with the most duration and lift after comparing the cams from each manufacturer, that would have been BAD ENOUGH, but he also tended to tell the tech guys he had expensive aftermarket components he read about in magazine articles that he "INTENDED TO BUY LATER" not what he truly had on hand currently, the result was that I gained a great deal of experience learning about correcting valve train problems when either parts failed or the car ran like crap!
the truth is that the vast majority of guys select a performance cam for the 5% of the time they may race the car rather than the 95% of the time they spend driving the car, then wonder why it never seems to run correctly
if you post all the info about your engine and drive train I can help you a good deal, Id also suggest checking with several cam manufacturers and reading the links, where most guys go wrong is that they assume that if a certain cam ran reasonably well in some magazine article or in a friends car that that same cam will run great in their engine, the fact that the compression, displacement, intake, carb ,head flow, exhaust back pressure , the cars weight, rear gear, converter,stall speed, fuel octane, valve spring clearance, valve spring load rates, rocker ratio, and port cross sectional area, etc. are all wildly different never enters the discussion.
hanging out with LARRY described in the links when I was younger proved to be very educational, LARRY made dozens of serious mistakes, in fact it got to the point I discuss intended mods with larry and if he seemed rather enthusiastic about the mod I knew it was a huge RED FLAG, indicating a good deal more research was mandatory
viewtopic.php?f=38&t=898&p=1450#p1450
viewtopic.php?f=52&t=6687&p=21437#p21437
viewtopic.php?f=52&t=5078
viewtopic.php?f=52&t=82
viewtopic.php?f=52&t=181
viewtopic.php?f=52&t=4957
viewtopic.php?f=71&t=741
viewtopic.php?f=69&t=5123
viewtopic.php?f=87&t=3404&p=8992#p8992
http://garage.grumpysperformance.co...deli-that-i-had-not-seen-since-college.15074/
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