e303 troubles

Hello, I have an 89 GT, just installed an edelbrock 3722 (same thing as the e303) cam. idle is fine, sound is perfect, car runs and drives great, with one exception. it has much less power than with the stock HO cam, at any rpm. it doesn't bog or ping or anything. im running stock heads, bbk shortie headers, hollowed out cats, with 3" exhaust all the way back. cold air intake, stock MAF, upper and lower intake. any ideas on what would make this ordeal worth it? Thank you very much for all the help you guys have given me so far.

-Tony

couple things... Did you degree the cam when you installed it? Did you dyno the car before and after to observe a real change? Why the 3" exhuast when you still have all those restrictive stock components?

Many years ago, a friend of mine wanted his stock mustang to sound like mine. He wondered what cam I had installed (e-303) and I told him...I also forewarned him that if he decides to just install that cam without any of the other changes I had made (heads, intake, TB/EGR, Mass air meter, headers) that his car would run like a$$...well, he thanked me for my kind words and installed the cam anyway and guess what...it ran like a$$ - no bottom end, wouldn't pull, etc...I notice that you are still running the stock heads and intake. Change those and your car will wake up. My .02 cents....

Clay

^^^what he said.^^^

The stock cam can make decent power with head and intake upgrades, but you can shoot yourself in the foot by overcamming your stock induction. You need to look into heads and an intake that can take advantage of the more aggressive vale timing events that the cam offers.

If you want to make power, the heads are where it's at. The cam is the part of the combo where most mistakes are made.
[addsig]

Won't that cam pull the rocker studs out of the stock head?

If you want to get some power back and keep the cam you just installed, go to 1.5 rocker ratio, and you may gain some bottom end back.

Going to bigger heads, and intake...., that cam may suddenly be too big for your application, make sure you get the correct components to match the cam, or a cam that will match your components.

You can port your heads, it will take a lot of port work, or buy a set of aftermarkets maybe the cheapest way to go.

The new heads, '89 would qualify, have screw-in posts. They are only 5/16 (kind of puny), but much better than the early model press-in studs.

What is your rear gear? Short of taking heads off, your next best fix would be to install a 3.55 or better gears in the rear end. This will reduce the time your engine will waste before getting 'on the cam'.

It'll change the whole nature of the cars performance. Note: Unless you are running really tall tires, I would strongly suggest not going past 3.89 or so gears - , even with OD (.67 ratio) 5th gear. For a track only car you might get better times, more smoking tires with 4.10:1, its usually a waste to install anything over 3.5 ~ 3.7 in a primarily street driven car.

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<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: Beoweolf on 4/18/07 10:29am ]</font>

i think your cam its out off timming check your vacum at idle if you engine its out of valve timming you are going to get a 8 or 10 points of vacum at idle. if you get a steady 12-15 your are fine

i actually just ended up skipping a tooth on the distributor, even though i had the notches lined up on the block and distributor it was 5 deg. advanced, got it put in right and running at 14 btdc and wow, so much of a diffrence. Now just need the gt40 intake, 24lb injectors, maf, and to get rid to the 6" cowl hood the car came with. Thank you very much for your input guys!

-tony

The biggest bottle neck you have right now is that puny MAF, then in descending order its the TB, U & L intake and then fianlly the heads.



BTW why install headers and a 3" cat back but keep the OEM H pipe?