Ok, the folks at TR are entitled to be mad. I think in all honesty they did design their own lobes. As I said before, there is only so much you can do to accelerate a lifter. It is well known to those in the LS1 community when TR debuted their line of cams. It is fairly straightforward to look at when the XE-R line of lobes was introduced. Again, the lobes may be very similar. In fact they might be almost identical. But, I in all honesty believe that TRis seliing their own design. The lobe cited by 93 Pony may be almost, or in fact may be the same lobe Comp sells. I can't say as I have not discussed it with any of the folks I know @ Comp. I don't much care either. TR makes some good products. They have a helpful staff, and folks should be thankful for their contribution to the LSx community.

Can we please drop this portion of the discussion and get back to the other topic, or do I need to go creat a new thread?

I'll summarize what we currently have :

93Pony: TR lobe x is a clone
TR: No it isn't
93Pony: Yes it is
etc, etc, ad infinitum... TR isn't going to post their specs (and I don't expect them to). Unless 93 Pony has a CamPro of the TR lobe and a Comp lobe this is pointless. Not the comp specs from the book an actual Campro sheet like this one.



If someone has one of those, post it... otherwise lets drop it...


Now, back to the subject at hand.

Would you care to point out which of the TR cams you felt was a relatively good choice, and why you felt that way?

Her eis another cam for you to critique.
This cam is an enlarged version of the MTI X1 cam.. reverse split with larger specs...

Competition Cams
Intake : lobe #3660 : .596 lift, 252 duration
Exhaust : lobe #3655 : .596 lift, 244 duration
Intake Centerline : 114
Lobe Separation : 114

If you'd like how about some suggetions on what you feel is the ideal max power cam on say a vehicle with bolt ons and ported ls6 heads. Do you think you can make 450-470RWHP?

 

J-Rod,
As of yet, no one has one of my larger grinds...so there is no hard data on them yet. I have seen excellent results from local large reverse-spit cams. Of course, these are fords....but the tech for them came from an LS1 guru. One car has a 232/228 110LSA & is running harder then ANY other stock shortblock 302 around....in a heavy convertable with smaller heads then the competition. The local cammed & bolt-on LS1's have yet to beat him. It took TEA 6.0 heads & a hefty cam to pull him. The other car is a 347 with a 244/236 108LSA cam & has run low 11's at 124mph at 3300lbs. There has not been an LS1 around here yet that can keep up....even on the juice.
You may think this has nothing to do with LS1 cam tech....but the theories are the same...as are the results we've seen....although the LS1 seems to respond much better to these type of cams. The main reason none around here have gone with big 'ol cams is piston to valve clearance. No one wants to pull their motor to notch the pistons....yet. I'm sure in due time one or 2 around here will do it & slap in a really healthy cam. We have the piston cutting tools....all we need is someone that wants it done.

 

Is this a joke? Comp has everything from manual cam grinders for Winston Cup cams (the manual ones with a good operator are better than the high tech CNC ones) They also have countless CNC cam grinders for the stuff we all run.

I would really like to know who grinds TR's cams. I really wonder how many people here understand the complex physics that go into cam lobe design. We are not just talking about velocity & accelleration but the ^3,^4,^5 powers of veliocity. That along with surface finish and the minor bumps and waves in the lobe surface, all mean alot. There is a good reason that about the whole Winston Cup field runs Comps stuff. Roush a couple years ago started doing cams in house, that was about the time between when Mark Martin was finishing second in championships to about 1-2 years ago when they had guys like Jeff Burton, Kurt Busch and Matt Kenseth started doing well. If the cam design doesn't mean much then how come Roush with alot more money behind him than all the sponsors on this board can't make a better cam than Comp?

As J-Rod said, the R&D Comp has with stuff like the spintron makes me wonder if small shops can even compete with that. The OMC that TR has is basically using a lobe very similar to a SBC Comp lobe, in fact you can buy a cam from Comp that is VERY similar as a custom grind. I know I've run the intake lobe on motors before. Hell if you wanted you could get a 224/224 .638/.638 Cam from Comp, which is going to be WAY more aggressive than any of the other 224 duration cams out there. If you wanted you could do a 230/236 .661/.663 cam from Comp, the valvetrain would be a bitch to do but it could be done.

Bret

 

O.k. I'm going to quote this puppy for the 4th time, but I gotta agree with Larry. If you were Tony Stewart, Home Depot would not be happy with you. I have nothing against the TR boy, in fact I agree with them alot on things.

To state from the begining I'm not siding with anyone here.

As for J-Rod and 93Pony, they are having a VERY good discussion here on cams, one I wish I got into on the ground floor but the posts are a little long now. If he did or didn't bash Thunder is really irrelatvant now, because the guy knows what he's talking about. Might not have been the best way of going about it the way he did.

The real thing to look at here in this post is that the lobe design really should be left to the rocket scientists. Or Nuclear Physisits as in Comps case. The cam design is another thing. With good lobes a good engine builder/designer can come up with a awesome camshaft for a motor. I know that's how I work, and it looks like 93Pony is on the same page. Now the counter bash saying that he doesn't have VE tables, dyno results etc can sometimes be VERY misleading. True those tools help, but they need to be used right. If you know who Gail Pauly is then you really need to throw those sterotypes out the door. The guy works out of his garage, and designs probably the best cylinder heads for NASCAR reguardless of brand out there. He has machine shops and CNC shops replicate his ports for him and the only hand work he does is on intake manifolds. Not bad for a guy with a shop in his garage. You guys might have the dyno and the facilities, but that still means you need a really good brain to make them all work.

93Pony,
I have to agree with all of that. When I spec out a cam for someone and all it does is end up on the net, or they go someplace else and buy it, that boils your blood. The worst thing is that I'm always scared that they will run the wrong parts with it and break something.

As for the intake design, longer runners on a LS1 might work but I would imagine that it would need ALOT of tapper angle to work well. The 8" setup now is long, but it's one reason that a heads/cam LS1 can out TQ a 383 LT1 by a mile. Acutally the LS6 intake is a VERY good intake design, it was just never meant to be mated to a 330+cfm head.

Good post guys, if we could keep the B.S. it would be even better.

Bret

 

I do have a Cam pro printout of TR's 224 lobe....& like Bret said it does mimic an already existing Comp SBC lobe. I just did not feel it was worth it to post this info. The boys from TR would pretty much dispute anything I post anyway. Why make them look like fools for spending big $$$ to create a lobe that already existed.

J-Rod,
If you want to know the TR cam that I think is their best, e-mail me. I don't feel it neccessary to give this info to....everybody....
My honest impression of the enlarged X1 cam is that it's too large in some area's & too small in others. I do not see those lobes listed in the Compcams catalog...so I can't say for sure how they'll work. But in general I'd tighten up the LSA quite a bit & plot better valve events...which would mean smaller lobes.

I do think 450-470RW is possible with the mods you listed & a cam....but I believe that piston notching would be required for a cam with as much overlap as that would require. Since the LS6 intake has a torque peak of ~4800rpm max you'd need significant overlap to get torque up to the 430RW required to produce the HP you're talking about. Basically making all that power below 6400RPM.

 

Pony,

The 224 lobe was not the lobe I was talking about, but another TR lobe on another TR cam, the Old Man Cam (OMC). The lobe I am talking about might not be the same lobe Comp has but it is very close to one Comp has.

To me it only makes sense that Thunder did use a SBC or HR lobe from Comp early on. That's what I would have done. Comp must have figured that they should take advantage of the 55mm journals and the bigger base circle it gives you and design lobes to work around that. That's where we get all the XE and XE-R lobes from.

If you guys want to see a interesting article on Cams go pick up the new Racecar Engineering in Barnes and Noble.

Bret

 

Someone mentioned earlier that the TR lobe was out about a year before the Comp lobe people are claiming that TR is using.
Think about it.
Maybe, just maybe...............COMP IS USING A THUNDER RACING CAM!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Why is it SO HARD for people to NOT BELIEVE that someone else other than a HUGE company design/R&D
something better? It's done every damn day. DAMN
How did a 15 yr old kid think of a way to transfer files/songs, etc. across the internet and make millions, before the HUGE COMPANIES had him shut down? DUH!!!!!!!!

Give it a rest. TR designs their own cams and they work well. Nuff said.

Tim <<<---doesn't own a huge company

 

I can understand why 93PONY and others might be so interested in our cams...because they work. However, he is trying to reverse engineer our cams to figure out what we did and all of the GUESSING as to what our cams are is not true. First he insists that they are an XE lobe (NO), then he insists that they are a certain regular Comp lobe#, (STILL NO) then, he tells people to look at the back of the cams to see what our lobe numbers are (GUESS WHAT, NO!) Has anyone figured out that NOTHING that this person has stated regarding our cams has been true so far? The only thing that has been accomplished in this thread is misleading many people who don't take the time to read the whole thing. 93PONY needs to start from scratch like we did (and many others have done) rather than try to discredit our work.

Angie

(PS- Check in the Comp Cams catalog - just out of curiosity, I looked and the 3313 lobe is 218 @ .050. That's 6 degrees off from our 224!)

 

Start a new discussion please, this one is too long and too heated.

Tony