Project C4, 85 Corvette

[Steve85]

Since I'm pretty sure it's somewhere in the hot rod bylaws that you're not allowed to have an engine on a stand not put a cam in it, I installed a cam to comply. And itÔÇÖs soooo much easier on this engine, I should have done this years ago. Intake stays on, lifters stay in, and rockers do not need adjusting. (If you go much bigger on the cam, you do have to get new pushrods because the base circle size of the core goes down and you need make up the difference)

The cam is very mild. I actually got a custom recommendation that turned out to be very close to a GM Performance Hot Cam which I felt was too aggressive for what I want out of this. The goals were a good idle, not too aggressive for the valvetrain and retain some semblance of fuel mileage... and if I could, avoid the need for a custom tune. If I went with an aggressive cam I would be almost $1K into it with springs, pushrods, tune, and custom cam. I found a comp cam 54-424-11 with the right Comp springs on LS1Tech. com for $350 shipped.

Specs:
212/218, .558/.563 lift on a 115 LSA

For comparison to stock cam:
197/207, .467/.479 lift on a 116 LSA

The pics:

Water pump off


Pet grub


Timing cover off


Water pump bolts for a handle (they could have made it the same as early SBC bolt pattern, but it's just off enough that you can't use your old cam install handle..booo!)


cam retainer off, cam out


looks pretty clean in there, and it wasn't easy to get exactly nothing in focus on this shot.


Now, scroll up and you'll see what it looks like going back together

Pedestal rockers, no adjustment necessary


Air line to hold the valves up and super easy to use valve spring compressor allows you to do two at a time.


valve spring compressor


I've been working through all the little odds and ends as well but very close to dropping it in.