Thinking about switching cams
On The Tree
Joined: Nov 2008
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From: Fort Worth, TX
Attention to detail is my old standby mantra:
XE-R and LSK lobes that are used by many vendors in their shelf cams are hard on a valvetrain. If you understand that and accept the fact that you need to design the rest of the system to account for this, you can run XE-R lobes - and I'd NEVER run them with beehives. LSK I'd never advocate for a true street car, even one that sees the strip, unless you were willing to check things ever 3-5k miles. However, if you're just adding **** into a shopping cart on a vendor's site.
STOP.
LSK and XE-R lobes beat a valvetrain up pretty good. Running LS7 lifters, 5/16" pushrods, heavy stainless valves, stock rockers, and aggressive springs to try and control those crazy lobes and heavy valves = failure somewhere down the line as things degrade over time. What fails? Rockers fail, lifters fail, springs can bind and break, or cams can become galled and take out a lifter. Why is that happening? ****-poor matched components.
With an aggressive cam lobe you generally get "loft" where a lifter will actually come off the cam for a brief moment and then get slammed back down on the cam as the valvesprings try to keep the system together. The more spring pressure you put on the system, the less likely loft is to happen, but it happens because of weak pushrods that flex and allow some spring pressure to be lost and the lifter to take flight. The problem is the lifter comes crashing back down and that can damage the lifter, cam, pushrod, or beat on the rockers and cause them to fail. It usually doesn't happen right away. But after 5-10k miles, you see the issues. As you increase the spring pressure trying to control everything, you put more stress on the rockers, pushrods, and lifters. It just becomes a problem that escalates.
How do you avoid this? First, get an endurance type lobe. Comp has them in LXL, HUC, Xtreme RPM. EPS has them as well with their proprietary lobes. Ed Curtis has his own lobes that work. Brian Tooley sells versions of his cams using these lobes too. You might give up a few HP at the top end with more endurance specific profiles, but you gain a lot of stability which can be worth HP and certainly longevity.
When spec'ing out a system take into consideration the two sides of the fulcrum on the rocker: valve side and lifter side. Lifter side, you want stout pushrods like 11/32nds or better, quality lifters designed to take aftermarket valvespring pressures, and endurance cam lobes that won't beat a system to ****.
On the valve side, a lighter valve is easier to control and requires less valve spring. And less spring is usually lighter as well, which just adds to the overall goodness of the system. A lightweight rocker is also important (the GM rocker is the lightest and one of the strongest - keep it).
When you combine lightweight over the valve with strength on the lifter side all with an endurance lobe profile, you end up with a pretty well engineered system.
My valvetrain is setup like that. Lightweight turned-down LS3 valves are 83g vs the stock LS1 100g and 110g for most aftermarket valves. The rockers are stock w/upgraded trunions. The valvesprings are Custom PAC 1900 with Ti retainers which have 150lbs seat pressure but only 400 open to be stock rocker friendly. I went with Manton 11/32 pushrods to eliminate flex and Morel 5206 lifters, because they are billet bodies with oversize rollers to create more surface area contact with the camshaft. And lastly, I have an EPS lobed cam that was ground on a Cam Motion billet core to ensure valvetrain stability. It costs more to do it this way and may require talking to several vendors. But if you're doing the work yourself, it'll be worth it.
And always, always, set up your valvetrain correctly! Degree your cam, check pushrod length for preload, check wipe pattern on the valve, and ensure adequate piston-to-valve clearance. Any of those could be off and it would hurt power at best or destroy the engine at worse.
XE-R and LSK lobes that are used by many vendors in their shelf cams are hard on a valvetrain. If you understand that and accept the fact that you need to design the rest of the system to account for this, you can run XE-R lobes - and I'd NEVER run them with beehives. LSK I'd never advocate for a true street car, even one that sees the strip, unless you were willing to check things ever 3-5k miles. However, if you're just adding **** into a shopping cart on a vendor's site.
STOP.
LSK and XE-R lobes beat a valvetrain up pretty good. Running LS7 lifters, 5/16" pushrods, heavy stainless valves, stock rockers, and aggressive springs to try and control those crazy lobes and heavy valves = failure somewhere down the line as things degrade over time. What fails? Rockers fail, lifters fail, springs can bind and break, or cams can become galled and take out a lifter. Why is that happening? ****-poor matched components.
With an aggressive cam lobe you generally get "loft" where a lifter will actually come off the cam for a brief moment and then get slammed back down on the cam as the valvesprings try to keep the system together. The more spring pressure you put on the system, the less likely loft is to happen, but it happens because of weak pushrods that flex and allow some spring pressure to be lost and the lifter to take flight. The problem is the lifter comes crashing back down and that can damage the lifter, cam, pushrod, or beat on the rockers and cause them to fail. It usually doesn't happen right away. But after 5-10k miles, you see the issues. As you increase the spring pressure trying to control everything, you put more stress on the rockers, pushrods, and lifters. It just becomes a problem that escalates.
How do you avoid this? First, get an endurance type lobe. Comp has them in LXL, HUC, Xtreme RPM. EPS has them as well with their proprietary lobes. Ed Curtis has his own lobes that work. Brian Tooley sells versions of his cams using these lobes too. You might give up a few HP at the top end with more endurance specific profiles, but you gain a lot of stability which can be worth HP and certainly longevity.
When spec'ing out a system take into consideration the two sides of the fulcrum on the rocker: valve side and lifter side. Lifter side, you want stout pushrods like 11/32nds or better, quality lifters designed to take aftermarket valvespring pressures, and endurance cam lobes that won't beat a system to ****.
On the valve side, a lighter valve is easier to control and requires less valve spring. And less spring is usually lighter as well, which just adds to the overall goodness of the system. A lightweight rocker is also important (the GM rocker is the lightest and one of the strongest - keep it).
When you combine lightweight over the valve with strength on the lifter side all with an endurance lobe profile, you end up with a pretty well engineered system.
My valvetrain is setup like that. Lightweight turned-down LS3 valves are 83g vs the stock LS1 100g and 110g for most aftermarket valves. The rockers are stock w/upgraded trunions. The valvesprings are Custom PAC 1900 with Ti retainers which have 150lbs seat pressure but only 400 open to be stock rocker friendly. I went with Manton 11/32 pushrods to eliminate flex and Morel 5206 lifters, because they are billet bodies with oversize rollers to create more surface area contact with the camshaft. And lastly, I have an EPS lobed cam that was ground on a Cam Motion billet core to ensure valvetrain stability. It costs more to do it this way and may require talking to several vendors. But if you're doing the work yourself, it'll be worth it.
And always, always, set up your valvetrain correctly! Degree your cam, check pushrod length for preload, check wipe pattern on the valve, and ensure adequate piston-to-valve clearance. Any of those could be off and it would hurt power at best or destroy the engine at worse.
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From: Broken Arrow, OK
Well the SNS sounds like the way I wanna go. Listening to the suggestions from everyone else and yourself that cam seems to be a pretty good match for my setup/goals. Now I just have to pick a set of heads.
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From: Broken Arrow, OK
Not trying to sound like a broken record but how do you feel prc heads compare to both of those. I'm not knocking the PRCs and I'm not to familiar with the AI heads but the TEAs seem like they get a little more attention. Being that I think tsp moves so many sets they gotta crank them out a little quicker.
PRC heads are fine. I'd do their Stage 1 LS6 heads. Affordable price and good performance. I considered those. I also considered Livernois heads. Also a quality head.
Ai makes a great product, but they are more difficult to work with. PRC/TSP are much more user friendly. That's a huge plus to buying from TSP.
At the end of the day, I went with TEA. They've been around forever and have years of great results to back up their ports. Tooley and TEA designed the TFS offerings for LS heads and they use that port program in the LS6 head. TEA and TFS are both Summit brands now and Brian Tooley of course has his own, new business. But Mike at TEA is great to deal with and was very responsive and helpful.
And to show where you can take the heads if you so choose, I've been talking to Brian about additional hand work on my TEAs that would make them pretty much equal to anything you could buy for a 3.9" bore, aftermarket or otherwise.
Ai makes a great product, but they are more difficult to work with. PRC/TSP are much more user friendly. That's a huge plus to buying from TSP.
At the end of the day, I went with TEA. They've been around forever and have years of great results to back up their ports. Tooley and TEA designed the TFS offerings for LS heads and they use that port program in the LS6 head. TEA and TFS are both Summit brands now and Brian Tooley of course has his own, new business. But Mike at TEA is great to deal with and was very responsive and helpful.
And to show where you can take the heads if you so choose, I've been talking to Brian about additional hand work on my TEAs that would make them pretty much equal to anything you could buy for a 3.9" bore, aftermarket or otherwise.
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From: Broken Arrow, OK
Yeah from what business I've done with TSP they're at the top as far as customer service goes. I was doing some searching a bit ago and stumbled across one of your threads showing off those TEA heads and WOW. I am really impressed with the results from them. That swings me far in their favor. I'd just need to find a cheap set of cores to send them.
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From: Broken Arrow, OK
Yeah I'm just trying to get a plan ready for when I'm gonna order everything. I've had the cam I've got for a while now and glad I've gotten the input I did before I bit off more than I could chew
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If you'd like I am a dealer for TEA and Advanced Induction. I can supply the cam and heads you need for a perfect match.
TEA and Ai can also supply new cores for 600 dollars.
TEA and Ai can also supply new cores for 600 dollars.
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From: Broken Arrow, OK
Well after almost 2 years I finally got the car done. I used a lot of the advice that was given to me on here and from other threads I've read through. I went with a custom grind from Martin@Tick and picked up a set of used 853s with a CNC port job from another member for a decent price. The car made 444/398 on motor and 580/584 on a 150 shot. After reading back through this thread Martin, JakeFusion, and PredatorZ were all very correct and knowledgeable in what they told me so thank you to them for the advice. I will post a link to my build/dyno thread and hopefully it works. Overall I'm very pleased with the results.
https://ls1tech.com/forums/dynamomet...-castings.html
https://ls1tech.com/forums/dynamomet...-castings.html
Teching In
Joined: Mar 2013
Posts: 32
Likes: 1
From: Upstate NY
Attention to detail is my old standby mantra:
XE-R and LSK lobes that are used by many vendors in their shelf cams are hard on a valvetrain. If you understand that and accept the fact that you need to design the rest of the system to account for this, you can run XE-R lobes - and I'd NEVER run them with beehives. LSK I'd never advocate for a true street car, even one that sees the strip, unless you were willing to check things ever 3-5k miles. However, if you're just adding **** into a shopping cart on a vendor's site.
STOP.
LSK and XE-R lobes beat a valvetrain up pretty good. Running LS7 lifters, 5/16" pushrods, heavy stainless valves, stock rockers, and aggressive springs to try and control those crazy lobes and heavy valves = failure somewhere down the line as things degrade over time. What fails? Rockers fail, lifters fail, springs can bind and break, or cams can become galled and take out a lifter. Why is that happening? ****-poor matched components.
With an aggressive cam lobe you generally get "loft" where a lifter will actually come off the cam for a brief moment and then get slammed back down on the cam as the valvesprings try to keep the system together. The more spring pressure you put on the system, the less likely loft is to happen, but it happens because of weak pushrods that flex and allow some spring pressure to be lost and the lifter to take flight. The problem is the lifter comes crashing back down and that can damage the lifter, cam, pushrod, or beat on the rockers and cause them to fail. It usually doesn't happen right away. But after 5-10k miles, you see the issues. As you increase the spring pressure trying to control everything, you put more stress on the rockers, pushrods, and lifters. It just becomes a problem that escalates.
How do you avoid this? First, get an endurance type lobe. Comp has them in LXL, HUC, Xtreme RPM. EPS has them as well with their proprietary lobes. Ed Curtis has his own lobes that work. Brian Tooley sells versions of his cams using these lobes too. You might give up a few HP at the top end with more endurance specific profiles, but you gain a lot of stability which can be worth HP and certainly longevity.
When spec'ing out a system take into consideration the two sides of the fulcrum on the rocker: valve side and lifter side. Lifter side, you want stout pushrods like 11/32nds or better, quality lifters designed to take aftermarket valvespring pressures, and endurance cam lobes that won't beat a system to ****.
On the valve side, a lighter valve is easier to control and requires less valve spring. And less spring is usually lighter as well, which just adds to the overall goodness of the system. A lightweight rocker is also important (the GM rocker is the lightest and one of the strongest - keep it).
When you combine lightweight over the valve with strength on the lifter side all with an endurance lobe profile, you end up with a pretty well engineered system.
My valvetrain is setup like that. Lightweight turned-down LS3 valves are 83g vs the stock LS1 100g and 110g for most aftermarket valves. The rockers are stock w/upgraded trunions. The valvesprings are Custom PAC 1900 with Ti retainers which have 150lbs seat pressure but only 400 open to be stock rocker friendly. I went with Manton 11/32 pushrods to eliminate flex and Morel 5206 lifters, because they are billet bodies with oversize rollers to create more surface area contact with the camshaft. And lastly, I have an EPS lobed cam that was ground on a Cam Motion billet core to ensure valvetrain stability. It costs more to do it this way and may require talking to several vendors. But if you're doing the work yourself, it'll be worth it.
And always, always, set up your valvetrain correctly! Degree your cam, check pushrod length for preload, check wipe pattern on the valve, and ensure adequate piston-to-valve clearance. Any of those could be off and it would hurt power at best or destroy the engine at worse.
XE-R and LSK lobes that are used by many vendors in their shelf cams are hard on a valvetrain. If you understand that and accept the fact that you need to design the rest of the system to account for this, you can run XE-R lobes - and I'd NEVER run them with beehives. LSK I'd never advocate for a true street car, even one that sees the strip, unless you were willing to check things ever 3-5k miles. However, if you're just adding **** into a shopping cart on a vendor's site.
STOP.
LSK and XE-R lobes beat a valvetrain up pretty good. Running LS7 lifters, 5/16" pushrods, heavy stainless valves, stock rockers, and aggressive springs to try and control those crazy lobes and heavy valves = failure somewhere down the line as things degrade over time. What fails? Rockers fail, lifters fail, springs can bind and break, or cams can become galled and take out a lifter. Why is that happening? ****-poor matched components.
With an aggressive cam lobe you generally get "loft" where a lifter will actually come off the cam for a brief moment and then get slammed back down on the cam as the valvesprings try to keep the system together. The more spring pressure you put on the system, the less likely loft is to happen, but it happens because of weak pushrods that flex and allow some spring pressure to be lost and the lifter to take flight. The problem is the lifter comes crashing back down and that can damage the lifter, cam, pushrod, or beat on the rockers and cause them to fail. It usually doesn't happen right away. But after 5-10k miles, you see the issues. As you increase the spring pressure trying to control everything, you put more stress on the rockers, pushrods, and lifters. It just becomes a problem that escalates.
How do you avoid this? First, get an endurance type lobe. Comp has them in LXL, HUC, Xtreme RPM. EPS has them as well with their proprietary lobes. Ed Curtis has his own lobes that work. Brian Tooley sells versions of his cams using these lobes too. You might give up a few HP at the top end with more endurance specific profiles, but you gain a lot of stability which can be worth HP and certainly longevity.
When spec'ing out a system take into consideration the two sides of the fulcrum on the rocker: valve side and lifter side. Lifter side, you want stout pushrods like 11/32nds or better, quality lifters designed to take aftermarket valvespring pressures, and endurance cam lobes that won't beat a system to ****.
On the valve side, a lighter valve is easier to control and requires less valve spring. And less spring is usually lighter as well, which just adds to the overall goodness of the system. A lightweight rocker is also important (the GM rocker is the lightest and one of the strongest - keep it).
When you combine lightweight over the valve with strength on the lifter side all with an endurance lobe profile, you end up with a pretty well engineered system.
My valvetrain is setup like that. Lightweight turned-down LS3 valves are 83g vs the stock LS1 100g and 110g for most aftermarket valves. The rockers are stock w/upgraded trunions. The valvesprings are Custom PAC 1900 with Ti retainers which have 150lbs seat pressure but only 400 open to be stock rocker friendly. I went with Manton 11/32 pushrods to eliminate flex and Morel 5206 lifters, because they are billet bodies with oversize rollers to create more surface area contact with the camshaft. And lastly, I have an EPS lobed cam that was ground on a Cam Motion billet core to ensure valvetrain stability. It costs more to do it this way and may require talking to several vendors. But if you're doing the work yourself, it'll be worth it.
And always, always, set up your valvetrain correctly! Degree your cam, check pushrod length for preload, check wipe pattern on the valve, and ensure adequate piston-to-valve clearance. Any of those could be off and it would hurt power at best or destroy the engine at worse.
Excellent advise.
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From: Broken Arrow, OK
A valve kissed the piston and snapped off at the head and ate the head and piston up pretty bad.
I should be getting the block to the machine shop this week. It's getting forged pistons and rods and a new better set of heads. I'm losing a little compression with the new pistons but I'm going to make up for it by bumping the nitrous up to a 250 shot through a plate.
These new heads are 243s and they have smaller intake runners than the old ones ( 241cc) so I'm hoping it should pick up some velocity and increase my torque.
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From: Broken Arrow, OK
Nope! I cut a lot out of the pistons just to be sure but #6 & 8 I had a friend do for me because I didn't have the means and I don't think he took out enough. Also when I talked to Martin he said it could have possibly bounced the valve off of the seat and caused it since the valve wasn't seated at TDC. The cam is 235/243 .637/.627 111 and IIRC the heads were 62 or 64cc, I believe they were milled ~.025.
Nope! I cut a lot out of the pistons just to be sure but #6 & 8 I had a friend do for me because I didn't have the means and I don't think he took out enough. Also when I talked to Martin he said it could have possibly bounced the valve off of the seat and caused it since the valve wasn't seated at TDC. The cam is 235/243 .637/.627 111 and IIRC the heads were 62 or 64cc, I believe they were milled ~.025.
That sucks....how did you cut 6 pistons but didn't have the means for the last 2 though?
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From: Broken Arrow, OK
This time around I've got the motor out and will be crossing all my I's and dotting all my T's
