I didn't believe this guy when he said this over on CamaroZ28, but his information was scewered from the get go saying the L98 cam was found not in the automatic Lb9s, but in the manual TBi cars. He said he pulled out the stock cam measured it and it was in fact an L98 cam.

Now, I didn't believe him BUT a local guy with a 1990 RS tbi 5spd with 3.08s did an amazing 15.1 or 15.3 around 90mph bone stock here in AZ. He's a moderator for the SW forum here on TGO. However, GM did some weird things when parts ran out...

Is there any truth to this or was he just full of misinformation?

 

What it should have come with, what it came with, and what is still there are often 3 completely different things, 20 years later.

I have a 1983 Van that came with a L69 shortblock and cam in it.

However I have only seen a B-car L03 that had a L98 cam in it. ALL Speed-density TPI 305 LB9 engines had the L98 cam, regardless of the transmission or options.

 

L03 with a L98 cam and no tune would probably be slower then a stock L03. I doubt GM would have made and put a coustom chip into L03 powered engine car, wich would also involve to set up coustom fueling.

I also doubt GM ran out of peanut cams, unfortunately.

 

Not sure about the l98 cam. But its not unheard of for stock 5-speed 3.08 lo3's to be in the low 15's. thiers a big difference between a 5-speed with 3.08s and a 700r4 with 2.73's

 

I'm going to call B.S ... Sorry

All LO-3 were run at 0 degrees timing "correct me if wrong" ... Anyways I threw a L-98 iron head longblock in a trans am once with 1990 LO-3 electronics and tbi system and the L98 would not run at 0 degrees no matter what. It didn't want to run for anything till it got 6 degrees BTDC

 

Thats the HEADS that are causing that......If you put non-swirl port heads on ANY TBI engine, expect to have to advance the timing 6-8* for it to even want to perform like the TBI heads.

On the otherhand, I put a stock LT4 vette cam into a TBI 350 truck engine and it had nearly perfect driveability on the stock program.