Roddimus Prime

Last I spoke to Wagner he said DaveB would be making brand new billets which is AWESOME.

There is only SO much lift and duration you can add on stock springs and valves without affecting idle and driveability negatively. I'm sure Andy knows what he's doing so once he gets everything dialed in and shimmed properly I'm sure you'll see a few extra ponies out of it. Breathing better is worth it's weight in gold.

Remember the modders moto..."how fast it goes and how good it looks depends on the size of your pocketbooks"

fluke22

Thanks for the detailed post Dave! One question though, you mentioned you were getting some valve float... how can you tell? Sorry if it's a dumb question, I'm just wondering what signs to look for. Hopefully my cams will be in soon. I talked to Wagner at the beginning of the month and they said it would probably be another 2-2.5 weeks before I received them.

DaveB

Hey fluke22,

The engine is making this slight ticking noise, so we know there is some floating going on. Andy thinks it is on the exhaust side only. Like I said, I will be checking into it some more this week and I will post what shims I will need to fix it. And, Yes Matty, we will find out over Memorial Day Weekend, how much these cams are going to help me at Mid-Ohio. I'm signed up for a 2-day DE and I see I have 3 bmw M3's a Miata + an Acura Integra in my run group. Looks like I'll be having a little fun.

Roddimus Prime

very nice....your racing stories are a thing of legend here. I'm always telling people about watching video of you crowding the corvettes in the corners. You'll need to come by more often and drop off some suspension knowledge. We get a lot of people asking about suspension set-ups and I just stell them what you have and how good your car does on the track. Your input would be more valuable though.

Stueck

i would love to have some suspension knowledge (not to get OT or anything)

kargoboy

Great post, Dave. Keep us informed, and yeah, it'd be nice if you dropped in more often.

fluke22

Thanks for the info Dave!

Anarchistchiken

Holy crap Stueck, oyur post count is 666. BE GONE!


I'm definatly interested in this. It's gonna take me some time to recover from the chunk of money I'm still in the process of handing over for the WOMP, but once I recover from that, I might have to look into this.

mattsstang87

You've been talking about some ticking. So were these cams just thrown in with out any shim checking/reshimming?

BTW, I think the price of these cams would be more digestible if Wagner offered different thickness shims on an exchange basis (or even included an assortment or an assortment for cheap $).

When I had my SHO and had to do the 60k valve train check, Cincy SHO offered fresh shims on exchange basis (you CAN make old shims fresh by flipping them [at least this worked on the SHO])

mattsstang87

That mid pipe is much better than his old ones with the long flex section. Better clearance.

mattsstang87

BTW, usually a Dynojet shows a 23-20% driveline loss for an automatic. With 23% you would be close to 140-150 fwhp with that 110 whp.

DaveB

Update #2

First off, to answer some of the questions asked.

Fluke22 - My mistake, what I had was not valve float but valve lash. It is easy to tell, when you start the car you will hear a ticking noise from having too large of a gap between the cam lobe and the top of the shim.

Mattsstang87 - Yes, the cams were put in without any checking of the valve clearance. The sad thing is, that I told Andy to buy multiple sets of shims every .002 in size so that we would have them to put in when I was there. He didn't order them because he didn't know which ones to get. When I talked to him earlier, I was under the understanding that he know somewhat the gap we would be looking at from the previous sets of cams he installed. The only thing that really bugs me is that he didn't even check the clearance before putting the engine back together. How long can it take to turn the cam to BTC and check the clearance with feeler gages. Anyway, he left that to me to check and just started the engine and heard the ticking and told me that he thought it was on the exhaust side only. WRONG!!!

Anyway, here is what I found. The valve clearance you what is 0.0089-0.0116 and that is on both the intake and exhaust.

Keep in mind that we have two valves per cylinder, so here are the numbers I got.

Starting from the valve closest to the cam gear end.

Intake side .012 .012 .014 .015 .012 .012 .015 .015

Exhaust side .017 .017 .020 .020 .022 .022 .020 .020

As you can see the Exhaust side was way out but the intake was also out of spec.
Anyway, I was able to reuse 4 shims but had to buy 12 new ones. The car is back togeather and sounds much better. Still no tunnig done with the cam gears but thats next. Well, update again once I have time to dyno it and get it tuned.

Stueck

look whos talkin, every time i read your name it seems to say antichristchicken..

fluke22

How much should I expect to pay for shims? Is this something the dealership should have in stock?

hughes412

What is the NORM for using shims? Or what is the normal amount of shims used on the stock cams? The reason I'm asking is the tolerance that you posted for the cams-V-what you got is a hugh differance. I use to be (or still am but not doing it) a machinest and for a CNC machine that is way off. Could Andy get that cam closer to spec? I know you wont be able to answer that.

Any way I can't wait to see the final numbers.

I just thought of this, but arn't you a machinest? Can't you cut these and get them out alittle quicker?