After you get it where you want it, put some lock tight on the bolts that hold the gears in position.

Keith

 

Last night I took the car out again and this time it was about 15 degrees warmer than the other night and the car was pulling the same lbs/min with one less pound of boost.


The car is definately not slower. I usually like to make my runs in 3rd and the gear goes by a little quicker than before. I am going to try to take the car to the track tomorrow night and see how much of an improvement there is over the old settings.

 

Silver Surfer,
I am just a newbie, but i can appreciate the stuff you have been going on about. I hope you can follow up on your findings and testing, you have made me change my mind from using a 264/264 setup to a 272/272 setup, your threads seem to always have good information, keep up the good work...

Cheers

 

I have the HKS 272/272 cams and Unorthodox cam gears and had them set at -3 on the intake and -3 on the exhaust

I just got back from testing the car out with these settings -4 / -1.5 and I have to say is WOW!!!

The car is a lot smoother from the bottom to the top of the RPM range. Just by my Butt Dyno I bet I picked up at least a 10-15 hp increase.

 

Really? How much did you gain from the previous settings? the 10-15bhp i assume is an addon.... how about torque? did it come up earlier?

 

Someone needs to hit the dyno and try this out opposed to the -3/-3, 0/0 setups with results.

I'd do it, but I have no gears. If someone buys me some gears, i'll have this dyno'd out .

 

Turbo Trixx ststed that they gained NOTHING from cam gears and do not reccomend them, they do help the idle though.

 

Vishu gained 10whp just by retarding the stock cams -5/-5 using aem cam gears. 91 octane fuel, dyno jet.... as stated in sport compact car feb 2004

 

Thats ON 91 Fuel, I bet that there was too much air and knock and the timing was way low with the cams at 0, but hey every vender has a Dif statement....

 

Well I took the car to the track with the new cam gears settings and it seems that it gave me consistantly over 1 mph more in the 1/4 mile. Everything else was left alone on the car just the cam gear settings were changed from -3/-3 to -4/-1. Every little bit helps.

 

Okay, so it may or may not make more power the the -3/-3 or 0/0 settings, but if it gives back the low end torque/power, maintaining the same power at the high end and cleans up the idling then I dont see why shouldnt you try it?

 

Hey thanks for the update, did you switch the cam settings at the the track to get a same day/conditions comparison? One MPH trap speed, that should be around 10WHP, that feels about right from what my butt dyno says. Especially when you consider that the low/mid range (where I believe there is a greater improvement) is not really utilized in a drag race. I would imagine you never went below 5K, what RPM do you shift at?

Care to post your slips or transcribe them for us?

BTW, I have done a little more test and tune and 4/1 1/2 degrees may be a little better. I suggested these setting to TXEVO and he seemed to also think the the 1 1/2 was a little better and it still gives the awsome idle and low end, that is what I am running now also. He is supposed to be going the the track today/tommorow and I did ask him to make runs with both the original and new gear settings.

 

Ok, well I did get to the dyno to run some testing with these cam gear settings, I was a little hesitant to post them because the testing was a little sloppy and the results were somewhat conflicting. I am able to use my local AWD dyno whenever there is no paying customers, I strap the car down and run it without assistance so... Well right after I got the car strapped down a paying customer showed up so I was under pressure to hurry up and get off.
I was able to run a few pulls with different cam gear settings though, but then I started getting the look that told me I had to get off. Anyway, on the AWD dyno jet I have found that the car makes slightly less boost than on the street (about .1 bar). While I run 1.5-1.4 on the street, the dyno is 1.4-1.3, I usually play with the boost controller to get the same boost on the dyno. But since I was in a hurry, and for this test it really did not matter, so I left it where it was. Air flow and loading on the dyno is not the same as the street, that is why IMO tunning strictly on the dyno without follow up on the street is not a good idea.
Now here is the funny part, as you can see the dyno did in fact show more power in the upper end with the new cam gear settings, but it also showed the spool up and low end torque was weaker!
My first reaction was " I don't care what this dyno says, this ain't right". But then I noticed something, at least on the dyno, the low end A/F ratio was much fatter with the new cam settings. I did not have time to play with fuel corrections to verify that this was in fact the issue so... Unfortunately I did not install the dyno wide band ( I have my own permenantely installed) so I don't have a record of this right now.
On the street I did not notice a significant change in the A/F ratios and the car just pulls harder, faster, smoother, better everywhere, and it is less knock prone! I was going to wait until I could get some sort of road dyno measurements to back up my seat of the pants/acceleration testing, but that looks like it might be a while so I figured I would share what I have. As you can see the dyno results seem to match up well with Fas4dr's track results. Accept the low end is actually much better on the street than what these dyno tests indicate. The seat of the pants difference is so noticable that I am sure this test is not accurately reflecting low end power that you actually get on the street. It seems like some where between -4/-1 to -4/-2 is the sweet spot.

Any way here are the graphs, enjoy.

 

Heres another one that shows the two extremes

 

It's interesting how close these calculations match the test results so far. This is from the smokemup.com web site.


Calculate HP from 1/4 mi MPH
If you know the weight of your car (with you in it) and have a quarter mile time slip this calculation will estimate the rear wheel HP of your car based on the trap speed in MPH.


You Entered:
Vehicle Weight - 3500 (lbs)
Trap Speed - 110 (mph)
Drivetrain Loss - 15 (%)

Results:
Rear Wheel HP - 316.3
Crankshaft HP - 372.1
Power to Weight (rwhp) - 11.1 (lower is better)
Power to Weight (crank hp) - 9.4 (lower is better)



You Entered:
Vehicle Weight - 3500 (lbs)
Trap Speed - 111 (mph)
Drivetrain Loss - 15 (%)

Results:
Rear Wheel HP - 325
Crankshaft HP - 382.4
Power to Weight (rwhp) - 10.8 (lower is better)
Power to Weight (crank hp) - 9.2 (lower is better)