Hey guys, I was wanting to know if anyone here had used the .420/.442 summit cam that is like $50. Are they really lopey or kinda mild, sound clips much appreciated. And what kind of ##s will it produce with an EPS manifold 2460-1s and a 600cfm performer carb mech secondary on a stock 305?

In advance

 

I haven't personally, but those cams are basically old-school, off-the-shelf, everybody-makes-one type of generic slight-upgrade-over-stock stuff. Fairly mild. "Underperformer" would probably be a better name for them.

Modern grinds such as Comp's XE series will walk all over them. As for how much power, you didn't mention exhaust, but you can probably figure on a 10-20% gain over stock with headers and good exhaust the rest of the way back. Of course, about 15-20% of that gain will be from the headers.

Performer carbs aren't mechanical secondary, by the way.

 

Its not a lopey,lumpy cam. (A lopey, lumpy cam has 224deg @.050 or more) Its a good upgrade cam for a basicly stock motor. Hard to beat for the $$$. Buy the lifters with it as a set. Add a K to the begining of the part number.
They work well. Not as "Old school" as a lot claim. A comp extreme@ $$double or more cost$$$ will not double the power gain.
These cams work with The stock valvetrain.

 

Bang-for-buck is always a hard target to nail down. If all you've got is $75, then it is better than the stock cam (and may even pass emissions later - but since a Performer carb was mentioned, emissions must not be an issue). But, will it run as smoothly as a more modern grind? Will you get better mileage with a more modern grind?

As always, there's no free lunch. Save now, pay later.

 

Well, to do this job, you gotta buy NOT ONLY the cam; but also the lifters, gaskets, fluids, timing set, maybe a water pump, no telling how many vacuum lines and hoses and connectors that fall to dust in your hands, maybe rent a balncer puller & installer, and how long is it going to take you?????

So, explain again, how using that ancient "el cheeeepo" cam is a better deal than getting the BEST POSSIBLE cam, even if it costs a couple less coins?

Ya know, I've BEEN THERE, DONE THAT. Back in my younger and even more foolish days (if you can imagine ME, foolish as I am now, being EVEN STUPIDER, and still surviving!!!), I learned that lesson when a tightwad customer told me once to put in some crappy generic "RV" cam like that, that he had scabbed somewhere for cheeep (could have been the EXACT SAME CAM, even though this was about 30 years ago); and me, fool that I was, fell for the temptation of making the money; so of course I had to charge him for ALL those other parts, PLUS about 8 hours labor. Then he came back and told me that his car didn't run as good as somebody he knew that had a near identical car that had put in the best cam he could get which at that time was a 268HE, and he wanted to know what he could do about it. Guess what I had to tell him.

Moral of the story: you don't save A DIME by using a cheeeeeep cam.

Or any other cheeeeep parts, for that matter.

 

SofaKingdon: I hope and trust you have not been permantly tramatised by the fact that 30years ago a customers car ran a little slower than a "near identical" car did with a different cam in it did?
There was probabily 100 things different about the other car. The small details make a lot lot of difference. the cam being one factor.
I have used these generic cams and gotten very good results with them.
Do the Extreme cams have a small power advantage? Yes, especially the more radical longer duration ones. But I'd bet If I were to baseline my car ( which has a Comp Exteme cam in it. and then switch to the closest comparable "generic" summit cam installed properly it would only change a few 10ths at best. Wouldn;t it be a kicker if the car ran faster..... If I had the time I'd do it just to prove it. ( but I don't)
Funny you never see the Cam Co's doing this back to back real world comparison?
The mild grinds of these generic cams work very well. A lot of bang for the $$'s.
A radical fast lift lobe has a cost in durability and the need for better valve springs. A lot of people tend to expect too much from a cam swap alone on a stock or near stock motor.
I had a mild vortec head 350sb with a 214-224 .442-.465 generic cam in it and it ran like a champ. Ran 13 flat all the time and had great mileage.
it made about 360 to 375 hp. (according to the time slips and car weight) A Comparable extreme/ energizer/hi energy/voodoo cam would have been within 10HP.
have you, your friends, your enemys, or have you even heard or read of someone having a cam/lifter failure using a Summit brand Camshaft? Or even the same generic cams branded with a different brand name? I haven't.....?????????? can you say the same thing for a Comp Cam? Not me. Had more than 1 fail prematurly. Had 2 different cams of the same grind in two different motors that both failed prematurly. Think Comp cams would help? NODDA..

 

Because the specs are identical to the cam that is matched to the manifold and carb. The brand difference will at most make a what 5 hp difference. Good to remember this is just a maybe 200 hp car. And because I am selling this car in about a month (just enough time to get a couple passes in). I really dont care about milage anyway its a fun car not my DD, so if I cant afford the couple extra $$ to get it to the strip and run maybe I shouldnt be running ya think. That and this setup is stripped, no vac no PwrSrng no AC no Smog; the cam install will probably be done in no more than 3 hours.

 

Sure it is. And if you believe that, then I'll do just like Edelbrock does, and I'll "match" the Brooklyn Bridge with 2 beaches in Arizona and sell you both together for more than the 2 separately like anybody else would do.

The cam was invented by somebody else in the 60s, and has been popularly known for as long as I've been in the hot-rodding hobby (which I'd be embarrassed to admit how long that is) as "the RV cam" or sometimes "a mild cam"; and the carb is a Carter model that's been around since the late 50s. Those parts have no connection whatsoever with each other except who's selling them, and are only "matched" to each other in Edelbrock's sales literature.

Or, you could consider that the ZZ4 cam and either a Holley carb or a Q-Jet would be equally "matched" to that intake, since it is being reported that the current ZZ4 intake is identical to the Performer except for the logo cast into it. Surely GM knows AT LEAST as much about "matching" as Edelbrock?

It'll "work" "fine", as far as that goes; and yeah, you'll end up with about 200 HP, give or take, since the L69 with its very similar stock cam was supposedly good for 190 HP; and for that matter, ran pretty near a 15 flat right off the showroom floor. That's all a pretty good guess. But don't expect much change when you swap it out, from where you are now.

And yes I've heard of the generic copies of those ancient copied cams going flat, even seen it happen myself a couple of times over the years. On the other hand, the current "going flat" problem isn't anything to do with the cam itself, but rather, the cam is the victim of changes in oil formulations, as the oil mfrs are forced by regulation to leave the heavy metal compounds out of their product that they used to put in there to prevent just such things from happening. Those timid legacy cam profiles are less susceptible to the lack of zinc in the oil only to the extent that they have far less aggressive lobe designs, that as a result give less power per .050" duration than more modern designs.

But like I said, it'll work fine, so if that's what you want to do as it seems to be, go ahead and do it. Won't bother or hurt me a bit for you to put yourself through a cam swap and not make much difference. There's nothing "wrong" with doing it, it's just a highly inefficient use of time and money in my opinion even if not in yours, when just a little bit more money and the same amount of time could get you better results. Myself, if I was going to run as much maze as what an in-car cam swap is, I'd want there to be more cheese at the end than what that RV cam will give; but that's just me. I HATE doing a whole bunch of work, or ANY work at all, actually, and it not making any difference. And I hate even worse when I spend a certain amount of money and do a certain amount of work, and the guy in the other lane spends and works the same, and beats me. I avoid that like the plague. But if you don't mind getting beat... then go for it. I love it when I look over in the other lane and see somebody who thinks that way.

 

But this 305 was rated at 155hp and I heard the cam was somewhere in the .3** area with like 190 degrees at .050 was I wrong about this?

 

What Sofa is saying is it is a slight upgrade to the L69 cam.

Will it be better than your LG4 cam? Yes.

You could have done better, that's all. But, F-BIRD'88 is on your side, so I'd say go for it now that you've ordered it.

Did you order new lifters, too?

 

Wow! I must be a real knucklehead...

That boxed by Summit, ground by Crane, underperforming, old school, off the shelf (just like any Comp Cam mentioned, BTW), generic, RV, copycat camshaft seems to have worked "OK" in my L98.

https://www.thirdgen.org/forums/tpi/...ummit-cam.html

Just because you spend more on your cam or combo, doesn't always mean you'll get more out of it.
I seriously doubt that I'd be running any better with an '07 model, off the shelf $200-$300+ cam kit...
My $60 one seems to work quite well.

 

i am sorry to hear that you are impressed with a 287 hp L98 but that just proves what a underperformer that cam is...

 

I built what I wanted...A very well running daily driver that doesn't need any special tweaks or chips just to idle. And yes, having at least 300 lb/ft of torque to the ground from 2200 to 4900 rpm's is a real underperformer and a major disappointment. I'm sure your 305tbi car is also very impressive as well.

FWIW, In my 44 years I've already had a few of the big horsepower street cars, the magazine feature car, as well as the disappointing big lumpy idle, eye burning PITA cars.

When you get a little older you will also realize that the most enjoyable cars are the ones that run well everyday....You'll also learn that it isn't always about peak horsepower...

Here's my last toy, since I'm not brand specific, which also made an underperforming 280rwhp & 322rwtq. A mere 280-ish RWHP number can do more than you obviously think it can. You might note that this sled had a wimpy stock camshaft and only 1 cubic inch more than you...
http://home.comcast.net/%7Enovishado...2/site1095.jpg

 

Yeah man sorry to bicker. I dont like doing it anyway lol. But yeah I ordered the whole shebang, cam/lifters/springs/gaskets/timing chain the works. Hopefully for $200 it will do good. What im afraid of is that I have 2.77? rear gears and a stock stall and stock bottom end. Thats why I got the 'el puney' cam . Thanks for the info guys!

 

im using the melling version of that cam in my car with poted 187's and an edelbrock performer EPS and 600 cfm 4160, today i take it on the road hopefully, but in the barn i can easily burn through first and second on new rubber against gritty concrete

 

wow rel3 so impressed you were in a magazine, but for a mustang... and i dont think the poster will be needing to burn chips with that carb... and with the properly choosen cam it will be streetable all day long

 

its a pretty streetable cam, mine runs as smooth as can be, im running a very similar melling cam, and i plan to dyno my car soon, f-body demon, i'll send you a copy of the chart

 

Don't worry kid, when I was your age I thought I knew it all too.

FWIW, not all were/are Mustangs.

http://home.comcast.net/~rel3rd/wsb/...2/site1433.jpg

Enough of the back & forth, huh?
The original poster gains nothing from your opinions (or your very weak attempts at flaming me or whatever it is you are trying to do), since you obviously aren't using the camshaft he's asking about anyway. Yes, I run the cam he's asked about. Yes, I make more torque at any rpm than your car probably would with a 150 shot of nitrous, and Yes, I do have a conservatively modded 350ci engine. But if it works this well in my setup, I'm sure it will work fine in a smaller cubed engine as well.

You may want to reconsider the whole peak horsepower thing as it means nothing in the real world. The difference between an OK running car, and a great running car is the horsepower and torque that is made under the curves of the graphs. If you understood what you see on a dynosheet you'd see that both the hp and tq curves are very broad and very flat on my combo. This is power that is felt at any rpm, not just at wot and maximum rpm. I've been in this game a LONG time and have already done everything you hope to one day do, as far as cars are concerned. I'm done with the back & forth BS unless you insist on carrying on this ugly habit.



To the original poster:
Good Luck to you. Having first hand knowledge with the actual camshaft you asked about, I can honestly say I have no regrets with my choice whatsoever. It's made by Crane and is a nice step up from stock without any tuning headaches or loss of low end and/or mid range power that typically go hand in hand with bigger cams. With your stock converter and very conservative rear gearing, I think you'll also be happy with this camshaft.

 

Definatly! I will see about doing the same up here. but im at 5,500 ft. I will be interested in finding out about the differences that the altitude carb and cam brand make.