Originally Posted by emperorjordan

So the long awaited cam thread from emperorjordan is finally here. I guess I will start with the beginning of my story. It will be a long read, but stick with me, or scroll down and check out the videos.

LAZY PEOPLE: SCROLL DOWN FOR CLIFF NOTES!!

The whole point of my buying this car in the first place over the other cars I was looking at (BMW 330Ci) was so I could put cams in it and get that old muscle car sound and feel in a new, reliable car. I got cams mainly for SOUND. not for power, or anything else, I bought them because I wanted that lumpy sound. Some say I am crazy, but I love it, and the power gains are a nice sideeffect.


I first saw the BBR cams when they came out in that infamous video thats floating around the net, and I thought it was the coolest thing ever. But after that and the threads on here and Corral and SVTP I think it was, with them claiming the huge gains, and then all the shady stuff with how they got the numbers, I put them out of my mind. Besides, I wasnt ready to spend the money and tear into my new car yet.

Then this january, Doug announced the Comp Cams he would carry, and I got really excited about those, and started reading and learning everything about 3v cams I could. Much thanks to those at TMS (especially "The Boss Hog") for their help. After a lot of research, I came to the conclusion that the Comp Cams as well as the new Crower cams for the 3v car were very different than 2v cams. They are high lift with not much overlap and are designed to make heavy use of the variable timing in the tune to make good power all around. While this is fine and dandy, they would make great power.... but they would run much smoother than a comparable 2v cam. So the most aggressive Comp cam for our car would SOUND as lumpy as say a stage 2 cam on a 2v motor. This is great if you want power and a smooth barley noticable idle, but I wanted a mean HUGE cam sound. and that was more important to me than a little more power gain.

But after some thought, I wanted to save money on a custom tune, so I figured I would just go with Dougs Comp Cams and have him email me a tune. Unfortunatly, his car got stuck in the body shop, and other things came up, and he didnt get them installed as quickly as he originally planned. Infact, I think they still arent on his car yet.

Then I met Canuk Power on these boards and he had the BBR stage 2 cams on his car and loved them! This got me really excited, and I had the money ready and waiting by this time, so I called BBR many times over the course of a month or so trying to get all the info I could on piston to valve clearance, what springs to use, lots of info on the install, and calling Comp and Crower and asking them questions too to make sure the info I was getting good. Chris at BBR was really really helpful and very knowledgable. He answered all my questions and gave me some extra info I wouldnt have thought of asking. All his info was spot on, and he was very quick to get back to me if I left a message.

The BBR stage 2 cams are comprable to a stage 3 blower cam on a 2v or 4v motor in the way they sound, and thats what I was looking for. They dont have a lot of lift, but they have long duration and a ton of overlap, which is nice because piston to valve clearance is not even an issue. Max lift is only .498

So I decided to take my chances and ordered the Blow-By Racing Stage 2 cams and also Livernois valve springs. The cams werent instock at BBR, but chris stayed on top of it, and got them to me within a couple weeks as promised. I had priginally planned to do the install myself and do a large writeup, but once the cams came and I priced out the tools I would need to pull the valve springs with out pulling the heads, and the stuff to put compressed air in the cylinder to keep valves from falling in, and then reading all the stories about how miserable it is to change springs, I decided to find someone to do the install for me.

I went to Adam at ST Motorsports in San Bernadino, CA as recommended by Don and ChevyKiller and others on this forum. He gave me a very fair price for labor, and a really really good price on tuning considering how many hours he had to put in to get it running right. We had a slight hiccup early on, because we needed some shims for the lifters that were supposed to be in the box with the cams, but after talking to Chris at BBR again, he told me exactly what was needed, so we could continue on.

Once the cams were installed, the tuning was real pain. The car would run ok at idle, but sputter at WOT, and adam had all sorts of problems. I called Chris to ask him about this, and he was again very helpful. He talked to adam later that day, and he sent adam HIS tune file. Tuners NEVER share their tune file, its their own work, and they dont want others to get ahold of it, but chris sent his to adam so adam could see what they did to tune the BBR car. Adam said Chris was a really cool guy. I cant thank Chris enough for helping us out here.

So anyway, after a few more days of tuning, Adam got it running to where he was happy. The car had stock H pipe and cats, SLP Loudmouth, 4.30 gears and a JLT intake when I took it to adam. We ended up with 303.9rwhp and 294.1rwtq. Adam said that if I had stock 3.55 gears he was confident that we could have been in the 335rwhp range. also, as you can see, the car kept pulling all the way to 6500 where I told him to shut it down. Chris said that it keeps pulling up to 7200 rpms before it drops off, but I did not want to turn my car that high. We ran the dyno to 6500 and set the rev limiter at 6800. It pulls hard all the way there, but a few more hp isnt worth risking turning my engine that hard. Chris said I would probably be ok setting the limiter at 7200, but if im going to mess up my motor, its going to be with a blower. Unfortunatly, I did not do a base run before we put the cams in.



You can see the curves in the graph. The car has a lot less torque off idle to about 2300rpms, then right past 2500 or so it picks up and pulls like a raped ape. I sort of like the mellower power down low, because it makes for easier and less jerky starts around town with the 4.30s. Once you get in the powerband, it pulls freaking HARD, and doesnt stop pulling all the way past the limiter. Also because of the overlap in the cams, there isnt much compression and engine breaking between 2000 and 3000 rpms, so when you are cruising and let off the gas in this range, it coasts and doesnt slow down much at all. This takes a bit of getting used to, but its nothing too intense.

On newly paved roads, or concrete freeway onramps when I am about 2000rpms in second, and I floor it..... as the car comes on the powerband and the torque builds, at about 3500rpms the back end breaks loose and gets squirrly, and spins more and more as the rpms increase. I guess I need bigger tires now.

Most importantly, I would like to say how helpful Blow-By Racing has been, especially Chris. I read all that **** and drama that happened when their cams first came out, and i agree with everybody else who was involved that it was most unprofessional and disappointing for BBR to act like that. But in my personal experience with them, I have nothing but the best to say about them. Adam said the same thing, that chris was very cool. When I planned to do the install myself, chris was gave me several tips to help me save time. So in my book, after dealing with them, BBR is a top notch company, especially in customer service. They got a lot of people mad with the drama on the forums last year, and that spread a lot of rumors about them, and I really dont know what happened with all that, but all I know is now, they were excellent through my whole time dealing with them, before and after I bought the cams.

Alright, thats about all I have to say for now..... All said and done, I am a happy camper, and I think these cams will nicely compliment the Kenne Bell i see in my future.

I am going to go out and wash my car and get you guys the long awaited videos. I will try to have them edited and up by tonite. I will edit this post and put the videos in when I am done!!

Rock on ModularFords!!!

Originally Posted by emperorjordan

like it says..... the following is copied from my post at ModularFords.com:

http://www.modularfords.com/forums/2...lub-59137.html




Cliff Notes:

I wanted cams for the sound mainly, I looked at Comp and Crower, but decided to go with BBR. BBR turned out to be an excellent company despite the previous drama. Power gains were good, the sound is badass.

Originally Posted by emperorjordan

Doug, Could you maybe explain what you said about adding a few degrees of timing in the IRMC tables in greater detail so I could pass it on to Adam and see if he can do it? you can post on here, or email me emperorjordan@gmail.com