Turbo Trix should have no problem... I've had Mark tune a couple of setups of mine. Granted, I've not had him tune Revolvers, but I have confidence in him.

 

Final Final Update:

Conclusions:

1.) The Revolver cams were causing the vavletrain noise.

2.) The Revolver cams do not make power on my car.

3.) There was nothing else wrong with my car, other than the Revolver cams.

Period.

Today, Tuning Technologies removed the Revolver cams and installed a brand new set of HKS 264's using the Unorthodox Racing cam gears -- the same gears that were used with the Revolvers -- the same gears that, when set to 0/0, resulted in the Revolvers making a valvetrain noise. We left the gears set to 0/0 on the 264's as well. Guess what? No valvetrain noise whatsoever. The car idles absolutely perfectly, and is much quieter overall. And oh, and by the way, these cams made more power with less tuning. Today, I wasn't fortunate enough to have JustDSM (aka: tuning God) help me, and I only made 3 runs with the 264's. I consider my tuning abilities to be moderate.

The gas and boost levels were untouched during the dyno runs below.

Here's a graph showing the HKS 264's on my car today vs. the best run (out of 6 with JustDSM calling the tuning shots) I made with the Revolvers (which were set to -4/-2 as to avoid the valvetrain noise).


Here's a graph comparing my baseline (stock cams) to the HKS 264's.


I may try and do some better tuning and play with the cam gear settings a bit later, but I thought I'd share my experiences thus far.

While I can't say that Revolver cams will never make power, I can say that they don't make power on my configuration. I can also say that (on my configuration), while set to 0/0, they cause an unhealthy valvetrain noise. I honestly have no idea what's causing this...but I know it's the cams. That was the only thing changed today. Same cam gears. Same lifters. Same base timing. Same EMS. Same dyno.

 

Ok, let me get this straight. You made 2hp more and 4ft/lbs more with the 264 cams over stock cams. Is this correct? I am getting this information from the last graph above.

If this is true then I am curious on how you can say nothing is wrong with your car when others are making significantly more power by adding 264 cams.

 

Scott, from looking at your graphs I would say that you still have the same issue with the HKS cams. You should be making 20 wheel hp more with ANY cam upgrade over the stockers - not 4hp! I was analyzing your dyno graphs that you sent me and in addition to looking like there may have been detonation (running smoothness factor of zero on the Dynojet runviewer gives a very jagged plot) I also find it interesting that you chose to compare the HKS's with one of the worst runs that you made using our Revolvers. Here are all of the runs that you sent me...........

the Air/Fuel ratios are also frighteningly lean for 91 octane - best power is usually made in the 11:1 area on pump gas. You can see that your best run is also the richest one. Adding more fuel would be a good start in realizing the true power potential of ANY camset.

 

Funny how collapsed lifters make less noise with less lift.

Really though, I saw less noise on the knocklink with the Revolvers straight up then the HKS 272s. I still say there is another issue on the car. ogvw is right about the power.

 

I wouldn't be too happy if I went throught 3 sets of cams and 3 weeks to make 2-4 HP over stock.

 

The dyno sheets are only telling half the story, Ogvw. Look at the data logs I sent you.

The last run -- the 9th dynojet file (which was the 6th run with the Revolvers), was, in fact the best run with the Revolver cams. I have no idea how you can say it was the worst, because we were experiencing knock in earlier runs, which was tuned out. Moreover, the first couple of runs were not even to redline because of the knock we saw on the Revolvers.

As for the A/F ratio, again look at the wideband O2 data on the DATA LOGS. Obviously, at 7Krpm and 25psi, I wouldn't be able to get away with running 13:1 AFR -- the motor would blow up. The calibration on the TT dyno WB02 is off. I can post up my actual AFR curves if you like, but I've already sent them to you, Ogvw.

So what's the answer, here? Why are your cams making my valvetrain noisy at 0/0 when the 264's are silent? Why do yours get silent at -4/-2? Why does the 264 combo provide a stronger looking curve?

By the way, here's the way to read those dyno file numbers..

File 1-3 were the baseline on the stock cams. These were the first runs from my tune on 93 octane running on 91 octane.

Files 4-9 were on the Revolvers.

My final file, file 12, was posted in my post above.

 

Yeah, tell me about it. At least these idle smoothly and don't give me a vavetrain noise...all while giving a little stronger dyno map.

I think there's more power to be made in my setup, though. It needs a couple of serious hours of tuning, which may involve cam gear settings changes.

 

to me run# 7 looks the best but I am not here to argue. All that I am saying is that whatever is going on with your car is still happening. You should see 20-30 wheel HP with my cams and a lot of torque over the stockers. Similar gains will be had with the HKS 264's. You are not seeing any measurable gain whatsoever. The 2-4hp between runs could be attributed to heatsoak, that is +/- 1% change in power..... you have to admit that is not normal.


As I explained to you in the beginning, our cams like to be run with substantially less total timing advance than other cams. I wish I were more fluent in the DSMlink for the 2G's so I knew what the absolute timing numbers really were compared to an EVO ecu - that might explain your detonation.

Quoted from the www.dynojet.com "Wide-Band O2 sensor has a range of 10.29:1 to 23.0:1. Specialized 6 wire heated and referenced sensor is self-calibrating for long, consistent life."

I firmly believe that knowing all of the data now I would say you had pre-ignition at idle simply from running either too much spark advance or running the car too lean. But that is just a theory..... would have been nice to experiment to see what was going on.

Again, I am only trying to help. I want and always wanted your car to run as it should, fast and powerful. I just feel that instead of fixing the issue you have just thrown different camshafts into the same problem, blaming me along the way. I really do hope that you can figure out what the issue is, as your car should have picked up more power with the HKS 264's (a very nice daily driver drop-in cam). Keep us updated as to what you find, I am very interested in what pans out.

Good Luck

 

A few other important things to note here:

1.) The noise experienced at 0/0 using the Revolvers was not just at idle. When you revved (and you had to to keep it from stalling), the noise continued throughout the lower RPMs (up to maybe 3500rpm). We, of course, didn't want to take it above that with this type of noise going on.

2.) Take a look at the graph posted in the very first post in this thread. This was on the Precision Dyno (Mustang) up in PA just before I moved to CA. My car was exactly the same during that run, as it was during the first 3 dyno pulls out here at TT. The only difference was that I was on 93 octane in PA. I'm not sure how to explain the jagged graphs at this point...but I can see that it was more jagged at TT than at Precision Dyno, generally speaking. Remember, the first 3 pulls at TT were with stock cams/valvetrain -- before they were ever touched.

3.) I'm investigating the EMS at this point to find out if there's any possibility that it isn't reporting all the knock to me. Since I can see knock sometimes, and tune it out, I'm doubting this. However, I too just want to get to the bottom of this and don't really care which component is at fault -- I just want it to run as well as it can.

4.) Not sure if this is worth noting, but the Revolvers (on my boost gauge) were giving me about 10Hg of vacuum, compared to my stock 19-20Hg. The HKS' are showing 15Hg. I assume this is in line with what others experience.

As for giving up on the Revolvers, you've got to admit that I gave them more than a fair shake. I truly wanted them to work (evidenced by my diligent documentation and continued committment through two sets). We just couldn't figure out how to get them to make power.

As for my modest gains on the 264's, I wasn't really looking at the peak numbers, but more the curve. There are a couple of areas where the stockers dipped down and the HKS' bumped up. It's not all about peak numbers, but I agree that I should reasonably expect more from this configuration. (The fact that they don't make valvetrain noise and idle smoothly suggests to me that I'm on the right track) That's why I said it would take some more tuning.

 

I know this seems like a silly question, but you had the Revolver springs/retainers installed right? Also, just by swapping in the HKS cams you should have seen a bigger jump than you did. Not sure about the valetrain noise, but I still think something else might be going on.

 

Yes. The Revolver springs and retainers were installed first, and remain in the car today with the 264's.

 

So you've been getting some valvetrain noise?

I'm willing to bet that the cam caps are not perfectly round. Take the valve cover off, pull one of the caps off and take a look at it. I'm willing to bet that they're not seating the cam on there properly, causing some oil distribution issues throughout the head and there's your valvetrain noise. What's your oil pressure at idle?

 

There was absolutely no valvetrain noise using the stock cams.

There was noise when using the Revolver cams set to 0/0 on the gears.

There was no noise when using the Revolver cams at -4/-2.

There is no noise when using the HKS cams at 0/0.

Today, I have no valvetrain noise whatsoever. I'm using the HKS cams. If this were the cam caps not being round, it wouldn't matter how the gears were positioned, or which cams were being used. I'm absolutely convinced that *on my car,* the Revolvers were causing the valvetrain noise. The only thing that was changed this last time was the cams, and the noise went away entirely.

 

Seems kind of odd that only on your car the cams don't work. Tends to make me think that there's a problem in the head somewhere that only presents itself under high lift (11.5mm vs 10.6mm of the HKS cams).

Strange.