I am doing a intake swap hopefully this late Winter, early Spring as long as I can get someone to help me do it all.

I am buying a brand new Stealth Ram intake with the AFPR and fuel rail kit from PAFORM350. I am buying some Hedman headers with 3" collectors & a new Hedman y-pipe. I am also buying an exhaust cutout, a Grand steering wheel, 2" cowl hood if I can find one, 58mm t-body and all new shocks. My current shocks in my rear are going bad for sure.

I am also looking to replace my current cam with a brand new cam to go with my Stealth Ram. I'll have 1.6 roller rockers to go with the install but at this point I'm not entirely sure which cam is best with the Stealth Ram. There is info on Comp Cams about modified TPI's and the Computer Controlled Cam's but nothing about the Stealth Ram.

I was looking to stick to a 112 L/L but maybe 113 or 114? I am not the smartest on camshafts but I want my cam choice to go right with my Stealth Ram, all new roller rockers, my completely open exhaust & my future plans are described below. The specs on my current cam are unknown but it is a small/mild cam installed by a previous owner.

To be more specific I want a cam that has awesome torque with better horsepower in the mid to higher RPM ranges to match with my Stealth Ram. I don't mind a choppier idle but I don't want a very rough idle. But my car isn't daily driven so it may not be that big of an issue. Gas mileage or good economy is nice with a cam choice but honestly, I'm not too concerned about gas mileage as my car already gets bad mileage at around 12 or 13mpg in the city. Combined highway/city I probably get about 16 or 17mpg. I'm truly interested in choosing a cam that is performance oriented for the street/strip.

To be even more specific and to help you all out, my rear gears are 3:27 POSI and I have a 2,300 stall converter. My heads are the iron L98's but I do plan on changing the heads out later on. I also plan to have a procharger installed in the later future and I plan to keep the Stealth Ram for a few years. NOS will be added probably before the charger/heads too. I am saying all of this because I plan to keep everything matching so the cam I choose now will have to work well with the future heads/NOS/charger.

Unless I end up wealthier and I mean really wealthy in the next few years I'll be using these performance parts to ride in on my car. Let me know about the cam stuff and I'll take the info in one comment at a time. Thanks!

 

No cam will work well with all those different combos. Especially the heads and the blower. That is a pipe dream, pure and simple.

Cams are CHEEEP. Get a cam that works with the combo you ARE building RIGHT NOW. Worry about cams for some proposed combo you "want to" build "someday" when you get there. When you do get there, get a cam appropriate to THAT combo. There's absolutely no way you can get one cam that will be "optimum" for all those different configurations, some of which (what heads, for example) you don't even know yet.

I noticed not a single word about TUNING in your post. No matter what cam you get, if it takes advantage of the higher flow and RPM capability of the HSR over your stock TPI, you WILL need some significant tuning. Your stock timing and fuel maps will be a SERIOUS impediment to your new combo working right, NO MATTER what it is. Check out the DIY PROM board on this site for some insight.

And like cams, every time you change your combo, you will have to re-tune; just like you would if it was a traditional mechanical distributor and a carb.

There's NO EXCUSE for your car to be getting such bad gas mileage. Sounds like it's defective in some way. You should consider a complete tune-up, including a new O2 sensor, immediately.

I would suggest, for the combo you're building NOW, a Comp XFI268 cam. You'll need the valve springs and all that, to go with it; and possibly head work.

 

Sorry, I didn't mention any tuning but my timing and the fuel I use right now are different than the 6 degrees factory set and 87 octane. I use the higher octane fuel to help prevent pinging because my timing was advanced a few months ago but I'll have some tuning done when I do get a cam finally. I just didn't mention it. I thought about taking it to a dyno shop to get dialed in correctly but I'll look into that when the time gets closer.

As for the gas mileage, I think it's really bad right now because of the cold weather. I don't drive this car but maybe less than a dozen times a month during the winter and each time I drive it I notice my gas mileage is kind of crappy. Well, some of that has to do with my driving habits when alone but usually if I go easy on her it's not too bad. But I live in the city so whenever I do go out the gas mileage is crappier anyway and plus the gas gauge isn't entirely accurate.

For the car itself, it runs fine. It has never let me down in the reliability and performance departments.

 

When I mentioned "fuel", I didn't mean, premium vs regular. "Premium" fuel is probably a waste of money on a stock L98, and may even make the car go slower, because its actual heat content (energy per volume) is lower than regular. The ONLY thing premium is good for, is reducing spark knock; and the ONLY time it will improve a car's performance, is in cases where the ECM pulls out timing to control spark knock that it detects via the knock sensor. Its only purpose is engine survival; its effect on performance is negative. People who say otherwise are most likely victims of a common marketplace phenomenon. See here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_dissonance for a discussion of that.

I meant, the fueling curve. I.e., when the throttle is here and the vacuum is there and the RPM is somewhere else, pulse the injectors this many milliseconds. There's a table of values in your ECM, and then various short- and long-term constants that are adaptive, used by the ECM to determine that. That's what "tuning" does: rewrite those tables, and adjust the derivation and effect of those constants, to make the fuel delivered match the engine's requirements for optimum performance, in the opinion of the tuner. The part about "in the opinion" is critical, because the definition of "optimum" could be skewed toward max power, best fuel economy, lowest emissions, widest compatibility with varying environmental conditions, or any combiantion of those and any number of other conflicting and mutually exclusive goals. You HAVE TO give up something to get something else. The tune that a person in New Orleans would consider "perfect" might not be worth a flip to somebody in Denver or NYC or San Diego. The factory's tune sacrifices max power in favor of emissions (by law), fuel economy (for obvious reasons), and universality (pretty hard to build cars different on the production line for different climates or different times of the year). If you tune for max power, you will sacrifice some of those other things; YOU get to decide which ones and to what extent.

Same for the timing: I'm not talking about twiddling the distributor body. The ECM takes the pulse from the pickup coil as an input, and looks up in a table similar to the above, when its output pulse should be delivered back to the dist to fire the plugs. I'm talking about TUNING the tables, like you would with springs & weights & vacuum cans in a mech dist.

In fact, it could be argued that tuning is MORE IMPORTANT in some cases, than what parts you choose to assemble together. It is CERTAINLY true that NO combo of parts will EVER work as well as it's supposed to, without TUNING the engine's control systems specifically to it.

LOTS of us live in cities and get better gas mileage than that. That's no excuse either. The "premium" fuel thing might just be part of that.

 

I'm not really sure why your answers are seeming abit rude to me and maybe that's just me. I use higher octane fuel to help prevent pinging with the higher timing and it's more money which is fine with me since it is doing it's job so far. No problems. I also plan on doing tuning once the parts are all joined together, but not until then. I honestly don't know what my gas mileage matters to you anyway. These cars aren't made for good gas mileage and if you get that out of it then that's great for 'you'.

I'm not interested in gas mileage and that's not why I bought this car and have been modding it since I got her. I'm interested in bettering my performance and prolonging the car's reliability, durability and overall strength as opposed to better economy, etc. I hope now you understand my position on this.

Now, tuning is very important and from every single article I've read about the art of tuning a import or muscle car, it plays a huge role in how well the car will drive. I have the basic understanding of it all and I will take what you've put into account. I just can't ignore that part of modifying my car and I love my car alot so I won't give it parts without taking care of her

 

I'm looking at the Comp Cam XFI-268 cam's online and I've found a few different ones where one is in a kit and another by itself for almost $300. I wanted to know if there is a kit with the valve springs and camshaft? Also, which valve springs should I buy? I'm looking at some right now on Jegs.com but there is a whole page full of them.

I'm looking around right now so I may or may not find it before you respond. Let me know please, thanks.

 

http://www.compcams.com/Company/CC/C...P/Default.aspx

 

Thanks. I think what I'm going to do is wait until I get some new heads and then buy a cam package with a new timing chain, new valve springs, etc. That way once I do that I'll have completed a large number of things on the car. I'm fairly pleased with the cam in my ride now so I'll just use that with the Stealth Ram I am going to put in.