Comp Cams Camquest

To get some kind of estimate for the power level in my engine, I toyed with Comp Cams Camquest page. I entered the requested parameters and the app spat this kind of graph for me:

Calculated peak HP was about 260 @ 5000 RPM and peak torque 330 @ 3500 RPM. This was using all the stock parts like carburetor, intake manifold, exhaust manifolds etc.

To get some kind of idea which parts would have the largest effect on the engine, I went through some of the options one by one. Better intake and bigger carb added about 25 HP and 10 ft-lbs but changing the original exhaust manifolds to headers gave a huge 50 HP and 35 ft-lbs boost!

Combining the intake and carb with the headers brought in another 30 HP and 10 ft-lbs. If the Camquest simulation is even close to real life results, I think first item on my upgrade list would be the headers. But for now, I'll go with the stock parts.

Comp Cams XE250H Camshaft

I happened to find a Comp Cams XE250H camshaft on sale in FMOC forum and decided to buy it. It had been installed in an engine but had not been ran so it was basically new. According to Comp Cams webpage, it offers "very strong torque, excellent mileage, smooth idle". Sounds good so I compared the specs a bit.

Parameter	Original	XE250H
Intake duration	266	250
Exhaust duration	244	260
Intake duration @ 0.050"	198	206
Exhaust duration @ 0.050"	198	212
Intake valve lobe lift	0.2303"	0.289"
Exhaust valve lobe lift	0.2375"	0.296"

I found the original cam specs from an online discussion so I'm not sure how accurate they are.

The XE250H seems to have more lift and duration when compared to the original but it is still a really tame camshaft that will probably run out of steam at about 5000 RPM. Oh well, my engine probably will not see those RPMs often so it should be fine. Especially with original intake, heads and exhaust. We'll see when the engine runs next time...