hi, I keep having alot of people telling me to match my spring lift to my cam lift...I have a set of 241 heads around here with patriot dual gold .650 lift springs in them. my concern is the cam I want to go with is a 230/230 112 LSA. ( cannt give full specs ATM, my other laptop crashed ) but the lift I No-where near .650, would these springs be ok to run anyways? I thought just as long as the cam lift was less than the springs, you were straight...

thanks in advance...

 

And why are these people saying this? Do they give specific reasons?

 

It's fine to have a spring to be capable of way more lift than what your valvetrain will deliver, but in a case like that, you would want to shim the spring (reduce installed height) to the point that at max lift you still get close (roughly .060" away) to that coilbind value. The reason for that is that when you get close to coilbind the spring can dampen the harmonics much better than if it were futher away. I think it has something to do with the outer most coils touching and creating "dead coils".

Still, you may be better off getting a spring designed closer to your lift anyways. A spring capable of more lift from a given istalled height will likely have a smaller diameter wire and would probably have to be a stronger (re: more brittle) material to achieve similar spring pressures than a thicker wire.

 

ok, I THINK the lift on the cam is like a 57? something...will try to go alil bigger, i'm sure I won't mind the power

 

It seems the people telling you this are caught up on running the spring within a certain amount of coil bind. Which is what you want to do to control an aggressive lobe. A 230 lobe with .57x lift does not sound like an aggressive lobe, so as long as the seat and open pressure meet the requirements there is no need to go to a shorter spring OR shim them up.

 

Lift isnt what will hurt parts, its the more spring pressure than whats needed is what the lifters wont like over time.

Getting a set of springs better suited for your camshaft would be best.

 

ok, well im just going to run them whenever I buy my custom cam, personally I think it will be fine...