First off props to Fran and the fine people at Raceproven Motorsports in Delaware. They did a fine job on the install. I was going to do the install myself, but buying a couple of tools came up the the price that Fran was giving me, so it seemed a no brainer.

So what did I do wrong? How's this for starters. Put a mid 230's 112 LSA cam in a 2000 TransAm, with stock stall, stock LS1 intake and stock exhaust manifolds.

Yep, put a cam in a car without all the normal bolt-ons that I should have done.
Why? Well it's my budget car so I can't dump everything into it at once. Found a good deal on a cam, and didn't feel like letting it sit for months so went ahead and did it.

I have HP Tuners and did the tuning myself. So far, it runs pretty good. Idle drops real low when you first put it in gear, but it comes back and I haven't stalled the car yet.

Car definately pulls much harder. Tires chip under WOT in 2->3, so that's new. So far........pretty happy.

 

did u evn upgrade springs, oil pump, tc, etc? or no

 

HAHA, Nice. get some headers on that thing so it can breath

I know the feeling off not wanting to wait, after driving an upper 230's cammed f-body for 2 years I can't wait to throw one in my new SS but im impatiently holding out for some supporting mods first.

 

i say we nominate this for a sticky and FORCE new members to read it before posting in the internal section.

 

Fran does GREAT work had home tune my car after my cam install and he has also set my rear end up. Fran and his guys are the only other people I will let turn a wrench on my car. I had thought about doing the same thing you did once I got my cam package in the mail (cam springs push rods) but i decided to wait until i could do everything else at once. Car was still torn apart for just over a year due to time and budget issues.
I would just be worried that the cam would cause undue stain on any of the stock parts that were not designed to work with it

 

Sure hope he did or something bad will result.

 

lol sooner or later it will.....do it right the first time lol

 

Should have stated, that yes, I did all the springs. Patriot Gold duals with Ti retainers and new seals plus hardened 7.400 pushrods. New LS2 timing chain while we were at it. Didn't upgrade oil pump. Fran commented that the oil pressure was great, better than most.

Ha........think I did everything I needed to, only thing left on the table was the oil pump and and underdrive pulley.

Again, I did pretty much everything right for the cam install, just don't have the supporting bolt-ons, and I can do them myself later.

 

What stock parts do you think would be affected?

I do know that a 3200 TC will be my next addition soon.

 

I have an M6 but when I did my cam install and tuned it, the Idle screw was maxed out and would not go any higher to open the blade, which caused the RPM's to dip low on startup and after cruising it would dip and bounce up and down until it finally would settle in again.

Solution was to drill a bigger hole in the throttle body blade to get it some more air at idle. Not sure if you have the same problem. But another guy with an M6 had the same thing with his mid 230's cam as well.

I did the same thing I had Edelbrock shorties and gutted cats when i first installed it and very soon after added the long tubes. I noticed it made a big difference.

 

So you got your cam all done and now all you need is some bolt-ons. Congrats.

I don't really know what you need for an A4, but at least an LS6 intake and some LTs and you'll be in good shape. You might want to think about a rearend and maybe some cylinder heads too. Good luck!

 

ok I was talking about your springs and pushrods, but now i see thatyou did replace them. Your just not going to flow as much air as the cam wants to with the stock stuff on there(heads, intake exhaust)

 

I didn't change the oil pump on my "98" car... so far heads are on the way to going in and feels great. Been a year on the cam, but I had my supporting mods in place.

Doing it wrong would be to NOT change springs, pushrods etc. Sounds like a do it right, just on a budget. You are choking the cam though...

 

I'm FAR from being a tuning expert. But one thing that I turned up said that you have to keep the TPS voltage at idle between .4 and .6, otherwise, the computer pulls info from another table. I managed to get my IAC counts only down to about 120 with a .59V TPS voltage. Anthing more and it falls out of the .6 range. The tuning guide I have said to get the IAC counts to around 80, so I'm definately high, even though there's plenty of room to adjust the idle screw further.

Could that be another reason your's may have been jumping around? Don't know, but I do plan to drill a slightly larger hole in the TB to see if it makes a difference.

 

You definitely need a converter, headers and ls6 intake to take advantage of the cam. I happen to have a fuddle that needs to be restalled you could pick up cheap.

 

well u didnt say u did those internal supporting mods in ur first post