Reply To: Re: cam specs?

[62oldsf85]

Right. That cam sounds like the closest to stock that you could get. I thought maybe you had decided to use a higher lift cam. I can’t say I know much about it, but I compared a Buick 215 cam with my Olds Cutlass 215 cam I have and they look very close. Have you asked Jim Noel? I’m sure he knows. Or looked it up on the Crower site? I think that was really helpful to me when I picked my cam. My two cents: with that cam the stock springs and push rods should be just fine.

I went with a stiffer valve spring (due to the more aggressive lift of the 260 degree cam and concern about bottoming out the springs), and thicker push rods D&D offers to go with the heavy duty valve springs. I had some trouble aligning my rocker arm with the thicker push rods b/c the holes in the head become really tight. In retrospect, I should have machined out the push rod holes a little to accommodate the thicker push rods – too late now and they seem to be fine now that I worked on the rocker arm.

I will say that the cam I used is very street worthy – it gives a good power boost without affecting idling too much – probably bottom of the top third of the road in terms of the cams that D&D is offering. I wanted to do some mild modification to the internals (I also ported and polished the heads, back cut the valves, and had to bore it out .030 b/c of cylinder damage) to up the power output of the engine – but my understanding is the cam had the most impact of all of that on the power. On the desktop dyno I used to calculate the power/torque of what I did, it showed approximately 290-300 hp. I’m not sure it’s quite all that, but it’s nasty when I get into the turbo. Of course, I completely understand and respect the desire to restore it as close to stock as possible, and it’ll still be very strong.