The V8 Owners Forum -

Happy Christmas to all.
I have just been reading the Hurricane cam post with interest. It seems a good option. I am in the process of rebuilding a 3.9 with stage one/ two head mods, an offy 360 and Holley 390 ( or Weber 45 on a swan neck) and was wondering if I would get away with something a bit warmer. I don't particularly want to mod the spring seats or loose that smoothness of a standard power/ torque curve. However the engine will only be pushing a 700kg kit car and not a tonne and a half of saloon so would I really notice a little less low down loss of power. After all it is all a bit relative with a v8, is it not?
Cheers.

Oh, I meant to say something along the lines of the Typhoon?

I've a typhoon in a cobra kit (3.5 litres), it spins up to 6k with ease.
It does not have a masive amount of low down grunt and I've had to set the tickover to 900-1000 rpm but its fine in a light car.

HTH,

Pete

Thanks for that Pete. Did it require any spring seat mods?

sean wrote:Thanks for that Pete. Did it require any spring seat mods?

Hi Sean,

It was already fitted to my car when I bought it, I did find that with the standard timing gear it is not possible to set the cam up as accurately I was wanted it so I fitted a vernier set. (It takes a long time to get it spot on).

I think that my springs are RealSteel jobbies which have less turns on them. I don't think that the seats need modding.

The Des Hammill book recons that you can not go higher than 10.9mm lift with the standard springs, the typhoon lifts the valves to 12mm.

My motor runs with bog stock Range Rover lifters, V8 Developments had the heads to do their stage III job on them and they reconned that the standard lifters are fine.

I set my preload with shims but I'm not very happy with it, I sort of gave up in the end. I think that I'll treat myself to some adjustable pushrods and then set all the preloads to 20 thou.

My motor is no stump puller but does rev nicely to 6k and is very smooth, it comes "on cam" at about 3.5-4k. (It will go higher but 6k is high enough for me).
As you've got a 3.9 lump this will softern the cam a bit so I'm sure that it will be fine. (Don't believe the crap on the RealSteel web site about 252 BHP from a 3.5 with this cam, it must have had loads more done to it to get that BHP, infact I'm not sure that its even possible!)

HTH,

Pete

Thanks for all the info Pete. Like you, I don't believe many of the bhp claims that are made, or rather, that not all the info is given.
It sounds like the Typhoon is probably going to be about right. Not too much in the way of loss and still a nice delivery curve. As I said it is all relative. My current old p6 3.5 engine, with god knows how many worn bits including SU linkages, still propels my kit pretty rapidly.
You said you had a timing up issue? Is it supposed to be able to be timed with the standard gears? ( although I will fit duplex)

sean wrote: Is it supposed to be able to be timed with the standard gears? ( although I will fit duplex)

It is supposed to be able to be timed up with the standard gear, mine was 3 or 4 degrees off. (I can't remember whether it was advanced or retarded). I don't think that the cam has been ground with advance built in, from memory the cam centre for the inlet is 110 degrees and the duration is 220. The Des Hammill book recons that if the mid point is half the duration then the cam has been ground "straight up".

I fitted a piper vernier which is OK but one of the sprockets (crank I think) was a tight fit, to the point where I would have never got it off again. I opened up the hole a thou or so with some wet and dry paper.

good luck,

Pete