Need Camshaft Advice

[Chewievettte]

I recently picked up an SVO engine to rebuild and upon teardown I found that the cam and followers are junk. I can either get an early TC cam or a ranger cam or if I save a few pennies I can probably pickup something aftermarket. I hesitate to do so because its going to be basically stock. I remember reading that the early TCs and rangers have smaller cams, will that affect my engine enough to pass them up and look for something else? OR will they perform fine? Like I said the engine is 90% stock, just a good cheap rebuild.

 

[Red_LX]

If you aren't going to port the head, it probably won't be worth your time to get an aftermarket cam. The stock head just flows too poorly to take advantage of the bigger cam. For example, the Motorsport A237 I'm running, in my car with a ported head it runs great. However most people with a stock head say the cam has no bottom end and doesn't really pick up until 3000 RPM or so.

As for the cams, 2.3L cams are basically all the same, turbo or not. The nice thing about the roller cams is that you don't have to break them in, and if you want to go to a bigger roller cam in the future you can reuse the roller followers. If you can get a good deal on a ranger roller, pick one of them up as it simplifies the break-in procedure.

 

[evintho]

Ranger roller = bolt in. Just make sure it's not from a later Ranger, '95-up I believe. They had smaller followers.
http://cgi.ebay.com/ebaymotors/Roll...tegoryZ33614QQihZ018QQitemZ280049409243QQrdZ1

 

[Chewievettte]

Thanks guys! Exactly what I needed to know.