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My cam has performed well and Martin spec'd it. He will be the first to admit in the beginning he was specing cams with too much duration. He has made adjustments since then and I am pleased with my interactions and products with him.
Must be an all new Martin then. When I critiqued his choices, he would defend them to the death with walls of nonsensical text. Then when his cams got smaller suddenly, he said he had been doing them like that for over 6 months. Internet clowns, I swear.. lol
For what it is worth. I have always liked smaller cams in my truck. I ran my current cam NA for along time and enjoyed it. I would switch to a smaller one but honestly i am too lazy to swap it these days.
For the price of a camshaft these days, why bother banging your head against the wall trying to decide if these new popup companies are any good?
Just call Ed! Its worth a few bucks.
And to comment on the cam specs... Some of you guys are judging cams by their lifts and duration. The last cam ed ground for me was in a 347 sbf. It had some stout looking specs, but was a gentle giant.
My point is, if you pay a Pro like Ed or whichever Pro you prefer, run what they give you before you knock it based on its specs. You might be surprised. Besides, what makes you think you know better!
For the price of a camshaft these days, why bother banging your head against the wall trying to decide if these new popup companies are any good?
Just call Ed! Its worth a few bucks.
And to comment on the cam specs... Some of you guys are judging cams by their lifts and duration. The last cam ed ground for me was in a 347 sbf. It had some stout looking specs, but was a gentle giant.
My point is, if you pay a Pro like Ed or whichever Pro you prefer, run what they give you before you knock it based on its specs. You might be surprised. Besides, what makes you think you know better!
If your referring to Ed Curtis, i agree. I had one of his cams and it performed exactly how i wanted. The spec were rather odd and not common. It was a 214/220 .59x/.58x 108+4. It had some nasty midrange and made alot more power under the curve. Not to mention the hp curve peaked at 6600-6700.
Just wanted to make you aware of my recent experience with a cam from Tick Performance. In July I had their "TowMax Stage 2" cam installed in my truck, a 2004 Silverado 1500 with a 4.8. Their site claims that, compared to a stock cam, this cam will produce "expected" gains of 45-55RWTQ and 30-40RWHP. All I got from their cam was 13RWTQ and 23RWHP. I've attached my before and after dyno results to this post.
As you can see, my numbers are nowhere near even the low end of the range that Tick claims. This is marketed as a towing cam so the torque gain was especially disappointing, with 13FtLbs compared to their claims of 45-55FtLbs. It's also marketed as a cam that's supposed to make power "under the curve" -- but, as you can see from my dyno sheet, it doesn't do that either. My gains were all at the upper RPM range.
In addition, the truck now idles poorly. It wouldn't idle at all as soon as the cam was installed (it had been a wonderful running truck prior to that) until the Tuner worked on the idle. Even with the best that the Tuner could do, the truck still surges at idle sometimes (I'm not talking ordinary cam lope, I'm talking 300-400RPM swings in idle speed. Surging).
Lest you think something about my truck or the install process is to blame, my truck has 118k miles and is in excellent condition. I spared no expense on the install process and had the cam professionally installed by a shop that has done over 250 cam swaps on LS trucks. I also had them install the valve springs and pushrods that Tick recommended, and I had them install a newly-rebuilt set of 706 heads at the same time. Then I had it tuned by the most respected tuner here in the Portland, OR metro area. The truck's only other modifications are a K&N cold air intake, and a custom dual exhaust with hi-flow cats and Flowmasters. It has stock exhaust manifolds. I informed Tick of all this when I bought the cam. The Tick salesman repeated that I should expect to see the gain numbers they were advertising on their website.
After the very poor dyno results, I called Tick to discuss the matter. Their response was to point out that their website says the expected numbers are "in a well-optimized setup." They claimed that phrase is supposed to mean that long tube headers are required to produce the gains they're advertising. However, their website says nothing about the need for long tube headers in the description of this cam: https://www.tickperformance.com/tick...-5-3l-engines/
In summary, Tick's numbers for this cam are greatly inflated compared to the results I experienced. Their site claims that "Hundreds of hours were spent developing this camshaft to perform precisely the way we advertise." That is why I bought the camshaft. But it clearly did not perform the way they advertise. Buyer beware.
03-19-2014, 06:49 PM
