TheAMCForum.com Homepage
Forum Home Forum Home > The Garage > AMC V8 Engine Repair and Modifications
  New Posts New Posts RSS Feed - Edelbrock and Summit cams are made by...
  FAQ FAQ  Forum Search   Events   Register Register  Login Login

Click for TheAMCForum Rules / Click for PDF version of Forum Rules
Your donations help keep this valuable resource free and growing. Thank you.

Edelbrock and Summit cams are made by...

 Post Reply Post Reply Page  <12
Author
Message
Greyhounds_AMX View Drop Down
AMC Addicted
AMC Addicted
Avatar

Joined: Nov/14/2009
Location: Kansas City
Status: Offline
Points: 1268
Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote Greyhounds_AMX Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: May/03/2016 at 8:00pm
I have the 204/214 in my 68 AMX with mostly stock 390 and have to agree that it works fine.

For the last few years I've been putting together a hydraulic cam selector to help folks pick off the shelf hydraulic for AMC V8's. It normalizes the advertised durations from all the cam manufacturer's so you can directly compare them, calculates Hydraulic Intensity, overlap at 0.006" & 0.050", overlap triangle, DCR, etc, and trims downs a huge list of all of the available off the shelf cams to match your criteria. It's pretty fun actually. You can graph two cams to compare them, and advance or retard them or try different rocker ratios to see how they impact the shape of the curves. Once I get it done I'll find a way to serve it up to everyone on the forum.

What's interesting to me though is that based on my engine combo, usage, etc, one of the cams that it picks for me is the little Edelbrock. I bought it 15 years ago just because it was cheap and close to stock.

1968 AMX 390 w/T5
Back to Top
Sonic Silver View Drop Down
Supporter of TheAMCForum
Supporter of TheAMCForum
Avatar

Joined: Nov/23/2011
Location: East Tennessee
Status: Online
Points: 7901
Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote Sonic Silver Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: May/03/2016 at 8:11pm
Originally posted by Greyhounds_AMX Greyhounds_AMX wrote:

I have the 204/214 in my 68 AMX with mostly stock 390 and have to agree that it works fine.

For the last few years I've been putting together a hydraulic cam selector to help folks pick off the shelf hydraulic for AMC V8's. It normalizes the advertised durations from all the cam manufacturer's so you can directly compare them, calculates Hydraulic Intensity, overlap at 0.006" & 0.050", overlap triangle, DCR, etc, and trims downs a huge list of all of the available off the shelf cams to match your criteria. It's pretty fun actually. You can graph two cams to compare them, and advance or retard them or try different rocker ratios to see how they impact the shape of the curves. Once I get it done I'll find a way to serve it up to everyone on the forum.

What's interesting to me though is that based on my engine combo, usage, etc, one of the cams that it picks for me is the little Edelbrock. I bought it 15 years ago just because it was cheap and close to stock.

I had one of those in my AMX for quite a while, and it worked well in a near stock 360. I went with more cam to make a little more power over 4,500 rpm. There is something to be said for slow opening and closing ramps, and modest valve springs on valvetrain wear and life.
Back to Top
Greyhounds_AMX View Drop Down
AMC Addicted
AMC Addicted
Avatar

Joined: Nov/14/2009
Location: Kansas City
Status: Offline
Points: 1268
Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote Greyhounds_AMX Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: May/03/2016 at 8:34pm
I agree with you there. It seems that the Comp stuff ramps too quickly to guarantee 100% success in every old engine that gets rebuilt. If there's any offset or wear in one of the lifter bores the cam eats a lobe.

There's some middle ground out there though. A number of cam companies are using faster ramps than the old grinds but less aggressive than Comp. Howards even has a cam that they guarantee for 5 years, no matter what. Drop it on the floor, run it without oil, whatever, they replace it. For $230 you get cam, lifters, and ZDP break in goo. 

Howards also has a few dedicated 0.904 grinds for AMC, but they don't have the stupid fast ramps of the VooDoo or Xtreme, so they shouldn't be as noisy or as likely to eat themselves. And they're made Wisconsin like my car was.
1968 AMX 390 w/T5
Back to Top
Sonic Silver View Drop Down
Supporter of TheAMCForum
Supporter of TheAMCForum
Avatar

Joined: Nov/23/2011
Location: East Tennessee
Status: Online
Points: 7901
Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote Sonic Silver Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: May/03/2016 at 8:46pm
Originally posted by Greyhounds_AMX Greyhounds_AMX wrote:

I agree with you there. It seems that the Comp stuff ramps too quickly to guarantee 100% success in every old engine that gets rebuilt. If there's any offset or wear in one of the lifter bores the cam eats a lobe.

There's some middle ground out there though. A number of cam companies are using faster ramps than the old grinds but less aggressive than Comp. Howards even has a cam that they guarantee for 5 years, no matter what. Drop it on the floor, run it without oil, whatever, they replace it. For $230 you get cam, lifters, and ZDP break in goo. 

Howards also has a few dedicated 0.904 grinds for AMC, but they don't have the stupid fast ramps of the VooDoo or Xtreme, so they shouldn't be as noisy or as likely to eat themselves. And they're made Wisconsin like my car was.
I went with an old style Sig Erson TQ 20 H, 292 advertised duration (287/283 at .006) .478 lift. 214 at .050, 111 lobe centers. Howards has basically the same cam. They now call it 269 duration, and 215 at .050. They once used a much bigger advertised duration.

    It seems to be essentially the same exhaust lobe as the Edelbrock, but the intake opens 3 degrees earlier, closes 7 degrees later, and has .030 more lift.

Edited by Sonic Silver - May/03/2016 at 9:28pm
Back to Top
farna View Drop Down
Supporter of TheAMCForum
Supporter of TheAMCForum
Avatar
Moderator Lost Dealership Project

Joined: Jul/08/2007
Location: South Carolina
Status: Offline
Points: 19610
Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote farna Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: May/04/2016 at 6:26am
Ya know, if you call one of the cam companies they will grind whatever you want as long as they have a blank with a lobe separation/shape that can be ground to handle it. Or regrind one you send in. Lunati reground a 196 OHV cam for me years ago. A couple people who like the Xtreme Comp cams but didn't want the high lift in a 258/4.0L have had them reduce lift so they could run a lighter spring and not need off-road oil or an additive. The fast ramp still needs a bit more spring than stock, but get over 300# per inch on a valve spring and you need special oil or additives. Under that is usually fine with off the shelf oil with low high pressure additives.
Frank Swygert
Back to Top
Greyhounds_AMX View Drop Down
AMC Addicted
AMC Addicted
Avatar

Joined: Nov/14/2009
Location: Kansas City
Status: Offline
Points: 1268
Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote Greyhounds_AMX Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: May/04/2016 at 8:00am

That's a good point Frank, but most folks will still just buy something out of the catalog. Given a choice, I'd work with Mike Jones for a cam.

But since I've always wanted to know more about cams I started my little (big) cam selector project and it's been a good learning experience so far.

1968 AMX 390 w/T5
Back to Top
mramc View Drop Down
AMC Addicted
AMC Addicted
Avatar

Joined: Jul/12/2007
Location: United States
Status: Offline
Points: 3217
Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote mramc Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: May/05/2016 at 12:38pm
I'm not at all surprised that Crane made camshafts for Edelbrock and others. I've always thought the cam choices for AMC V-8 were rather poor. I look forward to seeing what happens to the cam selector. I do think it would be good if some one designed a camshaft especially for an AMC V-8. Camshaft design is considered part engineering and part magic by a lot of people.  One last note the stock AMC family camshafts were all rather weak, usually in the 260 to 266 duration area even for the classic muscle car years and the AMC engine still made good power normally giving up 20 degrees duration to the big 3 in the classic muscle car era. LRDaum
LRDaum
Back to Top
 Post Reply Post Reply Page  <12
  Share Topic   

Forum Jump Forum Permissions View Drop Down

Forum Software by Web Wiz Forums® version 12.03
Copyright ©2001-2019 Web Wiz Ltd.

This page was generated in 0.094 seconds.
All content of this site Copyright © 2018 TheAMCForum unless otherwise noted, all rights reserved.
PROBLEMS LOGGING IN or REGISTERING:
If you have problems logging in or registering, then please contact a Moderator or