I've got my flame suit on and I'm ready for the **** I'm gonna take, but I gave up with trying to tune out my driveability issues with my Torquer 2 and pulled it in favor of the very tame LPE GT2-3.

While I'm expecting to gain about 1/2 of what I could have with the Torquer, I know driveability will not be much of a concern for me (novice tuner). This is my question though:

I've been eyeballin a set of PP or TSP budget LS6 heads to match up with the LPE cam; will I end up in the same boat drivability wise as I was with the Torquer? In other words, will bucking and surging and idle searching once again become an issue for me? Or is this something more associated with big cams that have a lot of overlap?

It's my understanding that by raising the compression with the new heads, I can avoid shifting my peak torque higher in the powerband. What I didn't like about the Torquer 2 was the very loose feel down low combined with my TC. I'm expecting to retain the tightness of the stock cam with the GT2-3.

Thanks for the help

BTW: In case anyone cares, I got this cam install done in under 5 hours (without chaning springs of course). That's a personal best for me.

 

BTW, for the guys trying to find the cam that best suits them, feel free to ask me any questions about my experience with this cam in this thread as well. I'd be glad to help.

 

I want a sleeper cam to go with moderately modified LS1 heads. But think the GT2-3 may have been conceived as a supercharger applicaton camshaft first and then found to do good duty in N/A applications. Have a heavy car and need a fair amount of torque down low. Keeping the 3.42s. Folks have done well with the HP but it I would rather tradeoff HP above 6000rpm for torque at 4000rpm or so.

Question: How have you felt the vehicle to perform from 3000-5000rpm? I mean with respect to previous camshafts you have had in the car.

 

From 3000 and up, the torquer 2 pulled like a raped ape. It was seriously fast. That was using a mail order tune, and I never had it dyno'd, so I have no numbers to speak of. As far as the GT2-3, I have yet to get the car on the road after the install because of the weather, but I'm hearing very good things about it. Sorry I can't be of more help.

 

Are you selling the torquer?

 

Instead of spending 800 or so dollars on heads, why dont you spend 300-400 on a professional tune and take care of the drivability issues with the tourquer 2 cam 100%. These pro tuners can make a radical cam run basically stock. I am going to be installing a MS3 cam, which is a little bigger than the torquer 2 and with a pro tune, i am expecting it to act 95% stock. If you go this route, you can sell the mail-order tune, and you will save $400 due to the fact that you dont have to buy heads to equal the power you want, and you can put that money into some other mods. Thats just my .02 cents. Good luck either way you go!!!

Justin

 

Higher flowing heads with more static compression should actually IMPROVE your driveability...at least as long as your heads have high velocity runners and aren't some hogged out factory castings. The TSP or PP heads are a step in the right direction as would be clean sheet designs like the AFR 205s.

 

Thanks for your input, but first drive the car with the MS3 and "pro tune" and comment on the driveability. It will be nowhere near 95% of what stock was. I went with the majority on this site claiming their big cams drive just like stock and was sorely dissapointed. FWIW, I did get a pro tune from the guys who spec'd out the cam and didn't have much luck with that either. As far as a dyno tune goes, here in MI, the only place I'd have touch my PCM is W2W, and from what I've seen, I'll be spending anywhere in the ballpark of 650-750 for their tune.

Patrick G, thanks for the input. Heads are probably a long ways away for me, but just wanted to consider my options. I was really on the fence about the CheatR cam too. I wanted it real bad, but I was warned about the lope I'd face with my LT's and ORY. Also, I'm really not wanting to idle around 900 rpms. I've always respected what you've had to say, and I'm sure you're thinking "I told you so" right now.

 

so the normal drivin around part wasnt much fun with the T2 ?

 

I listed it for sale around midnight, and officially sold it about 2 hours ago. Sorry.

 

Not at all. I was so worried that I would stall out every single time I came to a complete stop. Felt like I was missing a lot of torque down low, but that isn't fair to blame it all on the cam as I also swapped my TCI verter for a Fuddle with a lower STR at the same time. The drone around 2000 rpms was killing me, and that was with my Hooker Cat-Back.

I said it before and I'll say it again before I take too much heat: A perfect tune would have eliminated some of the driveability issues.

These are the gripes I had about this cam:

1. 950 rpm idle. Any lower and I had more lope than I wanted. Any higher and the exhaust volume got way out of hand. Even at 950, I felt the car was too loud and "shakey".

2. Shifted torque curve. I'm sure I didn't lose any torque per se, but the torque curve shifted to the right enough for me to be dissatisfied with around the time driving.

3. Bucking/surging. Again, after spending countless trying to find a happy place between "cruise control effect" and the surging, I just gave up. It seemed to me no matter what I'd have to deal with some bucking/surging.

4. Idle hunting. Even after re-calculating my RAF table FOUR times, and adjusting spark and VE tables over and over, I couldn't get my idle pinned down like I wanted to. I reduced my throttle cracker tables, tried to loosen up the "grip" the Idle Overspeed and Underspeed spark tables had, no luck.

I'm not a pro tuner, but I learn quickly and am a pretty smart guy. From everything I have read in the PCM section, it's impossible to correct all of these factors 100%. Too bad for me, because after hearing such praise for big cams, 100% is what I expected.

Again, my .02

 

i got idle on my TR224 set at 900, the exhaust isnt too bad i dont think, it still shimmies a little but i havent spent alot of time messin with the idle. i was contemplatin gettin that cam, but the TR224 pulls so good down low I'm afraid too, I've been on the fence for awhile now, although your post hasnt made my mind up yet I do appreciate the write up

 

This is not a flame, so please don't take it as such, but 90% of the issues you listed are tune issues, and not cam issues. I've tuned cams as big as MS3's to have near stock road manners. Let me preface this by saying that I've never tuned a rev. 2 Torquer, but I don't see it being any different than say my rev. 1 Torquer, or the MS3 that I recently tuned. Here's my take on the points you listed:

1. 950 RPM idle- My car idles rock solid at 800 RPM, and the same goes for the MS3 car I just tuned. Cold or warm start they go straight to idle RPM with no hunting at all. Your idle issues are either A.) Tuning issues or B.) Personal preference issues, since you mentioned you just didn't like the lope.

2. Shifted torque curve- To some extent this is just part of the package that comes with running a larger cam. It shifts the powerband up. You're also on the right track by laying some of the blame on the converter. Also, since you never dyno tuned it, you could have been leaving alot of power on the table. When I did my dynotune I picked up about 30 ft-lbs at 3000 RPM versus the stock tune.

3.Bucking/surging- Again, when running a cam with healthy overlap you're going to get surging. However, with effort it can be tuned out to the point where it's very minimal.

4. Idle hunting- My cam does not hunt for idle. The MS3 I did does hunt a bit when coming to a stop sometimes, but this is because the TB isn't drilled yet. This is strictly a tuning issue.

Again, I'm not trying to flame you or say that you're a bad tuner; we all had to start somewhere. But, with some more time and effort put into tuning, most of the problems you listed could have been completely eliminated, or at the very least minimized. I think it's unfair to blame the cam when the tuner is ultimately at fault. I think going with a smaller cam was a good idea though. It'll be easier for you to tune, and it won't lope as hard or shift the powerband quite as much. Good luck!

 

There are better choices if you want midrange torque in something easier to tune than going all the way back to that LPE cam, given you have good exhaust mods. Try a 216/220 112 110.

 

I thought you told me something in your pm when I asked why it wasn't drivable that you said...

"I'm running pig rich at idle, and for the life of me can't correct this. The PCM is telling me I'm running lean in those cells, but clearly I'm not. White smoke billows out of my tailpipes at idle. I've tried adding and subtracting fuel without much luck."

White smoke out of tailpipes isn't healthy and if it is rich at idle then I would think there would be massive stalling with an A4.

I just installed mine fri night and I am still running the tune from my 224 cam with nothing change except for a little more air on startup and moved the idle up from 750 to 850 and it loves it.

I would say I lost some power on take off but then againg it isn't tuned yet for things such as that. I am also running the stock gears with the m6. It does lope like a bitch but it was expected when buying a cam to make a ton of power.

just my .02

 

This is just more to support the fact that your problems are stemming from your inability to tune for the cam, and not the cam itself.

Also, white smoke billowing out of your tailpipes at idle is not a sign of running rich. You're either burning oil or coolant. You might want to check that out.

 

I had the GT2-3 cam in my Hawk and loved it. It idled and drove like stock, and with the stock tune it put down 385 to the wheels (heads, cam, hookers, m6 car). It ran so good I never even bothered trying to get more out of it.

If you need a good tuner, try Sean at CARS over in Waterford (248-682-3840). He has an MD-1750-DE chassis dyno (top of the line Mustang dyno) in his shop, and is the best big cam tuner I have ever met. I was never considering a cam out of the 220's because of tuning, but now I am looking at FM13 type cams bceause I know he can get it done.

-Geoff

 

You did the right thing. People don't understand how much driveablity they lose until they do a major change such as this (go from stock to t-rex). Like the the guy above with the TR224, it was somewhat of a change going to this cam and he probaly lost some driving issues but were very small and he learned to deal with it. If he was to switch to the larger cam he may not be dissapointed in the driveablity because it is equlavent from going from stock to the tr224. I can say this because when I went and bought a new car I realized how much I had lost from doing mods. That cam was designed for people like you and it severs it's purpose. I don't think you will be dissappointed.

 

It's definately not coolant or oil. Your eyes water standing next to this thing in the garage. Again, I completely expected responses saying I'm a crappy tuner, and I probably am. The issue I was having with fueling at idle was I couldn't nail down VE values the PCM liked. No matter what, wether I subtracted or added fuel, the PCM "corrected" to dump or pull MORE fuel, basically undoing my VE tuning. Everytime I went for a drive, did some logs and made some changes during SD tuning, all would be good till the next day. Almost like every change I made was coming undone in just a couple of miles. And yes, I gave the car plenty of time to re-learn the fuel trims each time.

As I said, this post is just out there for the beginner tuners who want a big cam and plan on tuning themselves. Just my experience. I gave up, maybe somebody else won't and will have great luck with this cam. Driveability issues aside, I didn't like the loss of "grunt" down low, or the high idle I had to live with to eliminate the lope.

My .02

 

You are running rich at idle. That's yet another thing that you just have to live with with a cam with lots of overlap. The overlap lets lots of unburned oxygen through the exhaust, which the O2's see and interpret as a lean condition, so they dump in more fuel. The only way around that is to run an open loop tune so the O2's don't jigger things. However, white smoke is not a sign of running rich. If you had any smoke at all as a result of running rich it would be dark grey or black, and you would have to be running super rich at idle for black smoke to be seen. White smoke means you're either burning coolant or oil. If you're burning oil the smoke will have more of a bluish tint to it.

I wouldn't say that you're a crappy tuner. I would say that you don't have the knowledge or experience to adequately tune, and were unwilling to spend the time to gain that knowledge and experience. There's nothing wrong with that, as tuning isn't for everybody. Most of us started knowing pretty much next to nothing about tuning. When I got HPTuner I had been running my Torquer on the stock tune for a few months. I didn't really know where to begin. But I read lots on the forums, here and at HPTuners website, and experimented and tried a bunch of different things. As I was learning, my tune and driveability actually got worse as I tried different things before it started getting better. To get my tune to a state of relative completion took months, and I'm still tweaking and trying different things on it all the time.

Tuning, especially a larger size cam, takes time and effort when you are a beginner. You can't just pick up some tuning software for the first time and expect to make a cammed car drive like stock, even in a couple weeks. Obviously you found that tuning just wasn't for you, and like I said there's nothing wrong with that. My only issue is that you portay the Torquer and other cams of similar size as having poor driveability that can't be tuned out, and that's simply not the case. You couldn't tune it, you didn't like the lope, you didn't like the powerband, so you got a smaller cam. I think you made the right decision.

That is simply an incorrect statement. You can't tune an MS3 cammed car to have 95% of stock driveability, but there are people on this board who can.

I want to close this by again stating that this is not a flame directed towards you or your tuning abilities. However, you are portraying cams in a false light. It needs to be made abundantly clear that these are your problems, and not cam problems, so that those people who are seeking accurate information are not lead astray by misleading "facts". That being said, yes, big cams are difficult to tune, especially for a beginner, and people need to understand that. But it can be done if you're willing to put the time and effort into it.