I was wanting to put a cam in my '91 GTA. It has the 5.7L Tuned Port Injection motor in it. How hard is it to put a cam in my car? What is the easiest approach on doing this? Any input would be appreciated. Thanks.

 

I'm not familiar with whether or not the cam would go in with the motor still in the car by pulling the radiator, but, when I did my cam I just pulled the whole motor.

If your motor is still stock and has the AIR injection, A/C and all that jazz, it may be a bit of a job. Especially if you want to remove the emissions equipment without damaging it.

For my car with no cat, no AIR, no A/C it is a pretty easy job to pull the engine. The most difficult part was that the front end of a thirdgen is so long that the engine hoist would not reach over the engine without hitting the front bumper cover. I had to bring the hoist in from the side with the hood removed.

I have a million pictures of the whole thing if you want some visual aid, just let me know.

HTH

 

I put a cam into my L98 with the motor still in the car. Just had to pull the radiator.

Assuming you have knowledge of how an engine goes together, you should be ok. I did the job with help from this site and a haynes manual.

 

how good are you with the wrench

if it was easy to do a cam swap

everyone would be doin it

 

well the swap itself is relatively straight forward.

Most people get caught up in the tuning.

 

Before I joined TGO almost 10 years ago, the extent of my car knowledge was changing the oil. At that time, sure, a cam swap would've been difficult, if not impossible for me.

As time went by, I read and read and read, and tried things for myself under the hood. Even then, a cam swap seemed like a lot, so I did searches on it, and read my haynes manual. When I did the actual swap, I only ran into minimal little problems.

No offense to the OP, but quite frankly, you either know how to swap a cam or you don't. If you don't, then yes, this is going to be difficult. I'd suggest learning before you try it. Go get a Haynes or CHiltons manual. Read EVERY search result under "cam swap". See what comes up. You'll find TONS of people willing to help if you run into specific problems ( I sure did ) but not sow many willing to simply "tell you" how to swap a cam.

 

Emission and A/C or not does not make a real difference.

 

https://www.thirdgen.org/forums/tbi/...-ultimate.html

Only thing not documented are TPI removal, eventually valve springs for your new cam, that you will need to remove the A/C radiatior and unbolt and push aside 1 front nose bracket to get the cam in and out.

 

did a swap with motor in the car had to remove the intake and what not(which was already of for my PI swap anyways). the radiator has to come off and the ac condensor has to be moved out of the way if you have it on there. also the backet for the hood latch has to be removed so the cam can come all the way out. as long as you don't go to big on the cam ur ok not more than .470 max with stock heads and springs. if you want to go bigger you must change the springs and may need head mods to handle more lift. With the stock cam coming in near .450 lift I think, it really would not be worth it unless ur putting a much bigger cam in and at that point you'll need new springs.

Just the cam is simple to do and I would put in a new roller timing chain set at the same time or at leas a new timing chain on. but if you looking for a good power increase you'll need to do springs to handle more lift.

 

What other mods are done to your engine? Because of the low-flow of the stock heads, and the lift limit of .480", I do not recommend swapping a cam on a stock engine, especially a 350 that already has the "best" cam in it from the factory. Any cam worth swapping will be too big for heads. Also you will probably need to either find a friend who can do custom chip tuning, or buy the equipment and tune your own chips.

Save your money and do bolts on instead, such as headers, high-flow cats, and cat-back exhaust first. Also, you can do suspension mods such as subframe connectors, tubular lower control arms and relocation brackets, and a panhard rod.

 

Did on my car. Busted my knuckles to **** squeezing my hand around the AIR tubes trying to get at things. The last header bolt on the pass side.. forget about it.