What does cammy mean

[wizzer]

I was asking about cams the other day and I was told that if I put a 295 degree cam in my car it would be cammy.

Any ideas what this means? Are cams a good idea or do they mess things up?

 

[FactoryFast]

hey dude. Cammy means that the engine only works in a certain rev range, any performance cam shaft to some degree cause this if other stuff is not matched to it. Although throttle bodies and programable ecus have largely got rid of it. Ever ridden a Rd 350 with a power band thats the definition of cammy nothing nothing nothing bang were away ....

 

[Loz]

:bigsmile:​

 

[pgarner]

street fighter stylee

 

[obi_waynne]

If an engine has an aggressive cam fitted it will not idle. The revs will alternate and pulse between 600rpm and 1300rpm. This continual raise and fall of revs is the easiest way to tell if a car has had a motorsport cam fitted.

It also means as has been said already that the power is in the upper rev range.

 

[stamford]

In other words it'll be impractical for everyday use as it is only driveable when in the power band where it'll be happy when on track, not on the daily commute. 275 is considered mild, 285 is fast road and about the limit, anything above that is best left for track use only.

 

[old-git]

In other words it'll be impractical for everyday use as it is only driveable when in the power band where it'll be happy when on track, not on the daily commute. 275 is considered mild, 285 is fast road and about the limit, anything above that is best left for track use only.

Up to a point. It depends on what you are prepared to accept and what you are used to.

Back in the 70s (remember those, Stamford?) I bought my Elan. Over the following decade I increased the BHP from the original 90bhp at the flywheel to 168bhp at the rear wheels (saloon race car figures back then). Each cam upgrade was greeted with 'Oh, I think you may find these too 'cammy' for road use.' However, I got used to the new cams so the next upgrade just felt like the previous. I finally ended up using Newman L1 cams which were their full race items at the time.

By adapting my driving style coupled with the car being light (700kg) and properly set up, I was able to drive the car easily. Friends and girlfriend, however, found it very difficult.

The Elan was my only car so was used to commute as well as for fun.

I think that as cars have become much easier to drive you lot have become soft

 

[FactoryFast]

Well now much debate regarding cammy !!. But keywords such as "properly set up" speak volumes, "remember for every action there is a reaction".

Camshafts there, timing ,profiles and specs take up more pages of tuning books then just about any other subject, the reality is untill recently it was the done thing to go big on everything from porting to cams to carbs. Thank god a few gifted people began thinking outside the box and lead us to what we have today, since about 95 i have been adding material to the ports in order to increase velocity this in turn means the need for high lift or long duration cams has declined. By keeping intake port speed high the cylinder is filled with more and a better quality of mixture over a longer period, further to this the trend is also to reduce lift and increase duration as well as opening the valve sooner and closing it sooner by advancing the cam timing. But i agree we have become soft yet we also are on the crest of a wave, techniques have improved new ideas and theorys have given reliable drivable power. But i still fire my mk1 up and curse it all the way to goodwood and back each year,vowing to throw the x flow away and fit a zetec but i never will even though it takes a week to clean the soot of the back.....

 

[stamford]

Well Steve I do remember the 70's but was not driving back then :blink1:

Yes today's drivers are soft as they are only used to the luxury of ecu controlled driving styles. Cammed up modern engines are easier to drive today because the work is done by the ecu, constantly monitoring the engine and these aftermarket ecu's which are needed to run 'hot' set-ups are not cheap as you well know. OE ecu's have a tolerance for minor modifications and need replacing when pushing the limits.

The old school set-ups using a distributor and good old fashioned carbs were rough running and needed a well controlled foot and concentration to drive them. I had a few hot cammed cars back then and were fun to drive when in the 'zone' but were a right bitch in stop/start traffic as they were so lumpy and wanting to stall.

How you go will depend on your personal comfort zone when driving. Some will put up with the car being a pain to drive but will forget that when planting the pedal and releasing the constraint.

 

[FactoryFast]

Well guys gonna have to disagree on this one i am afraid, first ecus are not expensive £20 quid on ebay for a programmable one out of a jap rep mobile, fit it and its looms to an older car or modern and program away. Megasquirt is a wicked ecu with everything bar fly by wire well within the scope of a diyer and cheap, as for cammed up old school cars were they really that good ??. What makes a car exciting to drive ? Is 225 BHP RS TURBO less exciting then a 150 bhp pinto engined mk1 escort? of course not they just do it differently, the rs would keep with the mk1 with ease boring almost yet in the mk1 adreneline is flowing, but drive the rs using all its 225 bhp and you get the same effect.

To be honest i dont think drivers today are soft i just think they are less connected then perhaps we were, i no how things work under the bonnet i can imagine them working in my head, todays drivers benefit from our frustrations that made car makers spend our money to give us the reliable boring eco friendly quiet touchy feely cars we have today, and then snap on gave us the ability to screw them up to just how we remember .... "If 1 man can do it another can undo it"

Happy dayz

 

[old-git]

I don't disagree with anything Stamford and Factory Fast have said (except about ECUs - If you are looking for serious power and control you have to look beyond the likes of megasquirt IMO). I just think that today's boy racers have it easy compared to when I was one

We spent hours playing around with distributor weights and springs (only way to alter timing advance curve back then) instead of re-maps, offset cam dowels rather than vernier pulleys, twin carb balancing nightmares instead of programmable fuel injection.

There were no 'tuning houses' for the humble BR, we only had Burtons, All Car Equipe and a pre-Halfords Ripspeed. A lot of trial and error was involved. Today, you can go to a tuning company and spec an engine producing 437bhp and the bits will be picked off the shelf to supply that power.

Back in the late 70's I bought one of the first nitrous systems imported into the country. Very basic, either on or off. Now, we have variable control, programmable, multistage systems.

170bhp at the wheels was almost unheard of back then. Now, most shopping trolleys have more! If you wanted to increase power a lot of mods were required. Now, it is simply a matter of punching a few keys.

Personally, I think we had more fun, but I would. But then again, a 500bhp+ Elan should be more interesting than the previous 168