[hardline_42]

Originally Posted by NJSPEEDER

i know the article he is talking about. looking at the peak numbers is misleading when it comes to the updated cam designs. the peaks aren't a huge gain when you go from miniture old cam to miniture new cam, but the average power is higher.
basically you see the improvement all the way across the chart, not jsut at peak.
peak numbers are nice if all you wanna do is brag to your friends, area under teh curve is what makes the car quicker/faster.

Not to but Dirt Reynolds wrote a reply to you on NastyZ28.

Originally Posted by Dirt Reynolds

NJSPEEDER -- I'll address your posts here since it concerns this topic, and I'm not a member of your board.


First of all -- if you've been reading this topic you'd know from the get-go the Vortec/413 combo was a budget deal. The cam and lifter kit was about a hundred bucks and the springs were $30. A similar grind to this is sold by Edelbrock as their 'Performer RPM' camshaft. Sure it's not 'state of the art', but it certainly works, and is easy on the valvetrain. The spring requirement meant that the seats did not need to be cut yet still provide good performance. The rocker arms were stock as were the valves, and I used a 3310 Holley carb. The vehicle weight approached 3800 lbs race-ready and if you know anything at all about what it takes to make a tank of a car this heavy run near the 11's with a street small block you'd know that the combo I listed worked not too bad. In fact, I thought initially if the car went a 12.70 on drag radials that would be great. Instead it got quicker and faster down to the 12-teen range. It would have went in the 11s with further tuning and trying various launching techniques, of that I'm certain. I think this is not shabby performance, all things considered. And just as a further note -- this 413 did eventually run in the 11.70s on drag radials with different heads, intake and a much bigger solid FT cam.

Regarding your comments about the reply I made concerning the GM 330HP GM engine cam swap test -- for all that effort to install a much larger cam grind (Comp XE 268 224°/230°/110° LSA) vs. the stock GM 330HP camshaft (212°/222°/112°) to net a gain of 7HP -- that cam swap was not worth the effort. Yes, power across the useable RPM range is what is important but what did you see in that test that made going to another bigger, so-called 'better' cam profile, worth the while? I saw very little to nothing there. The stock cam provided great torque across the useable RPM range and was well suited to that particular engine. In my case the useable RPM range was off-idle to 5700 RPM, although it would RPM to 6000. That is a good indication of how streetable the budget 400/Vortec package really was.

I shared my build-up here on Nasty to assist others who might want to go down the Vortec path and others like DriveWFO and Malibu2slow have gone quicker than I have with Vortecs - right into the mid-11s - so by no means is my car the 'be all and end all' of things Vortec. I've learned from others also. It's a two-way street. It is just my one man's contribution to the forum. My build simply represents what is possible on a real budget.

I would suggest you re-read the details before putting your mouth in gear.