hello, i bought this car about 6 months ago. i know the 302 has been recently rebuilt. dont know when or how many miles ago. i cant get ahold to the person i bought it from to ask her and we live to far apart to go ask in person. now it run great! no problem with anything BUT my wifes v-8 lincoln ls will smoke it. in fact that little car will scare you sometimes. what i want to know is can i simply just pull the motor and put a more radical cam in it with putting lifters, tapets ect? if so what size cam would you recomend? but one thing i do want is for it to loap when its at idle.

 

Hello,
Sweet car! To start off, you dont have to pull the engine out of the car just for a cam swap. If you were to pull apart the entire motor and rebuild it then you need to pull it out, other wise you'll be wasting some time. As for the cam, do you know what your compression ratio is? When you start going with bigger cams, it requires more compression. My compresion ratio is about 9.2:1 which is probably close to yours and i am running a decent size cam, it is a hydraulic flat tappet comp cams extreme energy cam. If i remember correctly It has 280 duration on the exhaust with 512 lift and 268 duration on the intake with 509 lift. You could go with this cam as well, but you will have to upgrade your torque converter to about a 2500 stall and change your rear gears to aleast 3.55's. These other upgrades dont have to be done but they should if you want the car to perform and run its best. As far as the lope, this cam has a really nice lope and gives the motor a real mean sound. The car has plenty of power for the street, but keep in mind that i have and aftermarket intake, a holley 670cfm carb, and heads that have been ported, polished and have much bigger valves installed in them. You must also keep in mind that all the parts of the motor must compliment each other. That means that thing such as the intake and cam must have the same RPM rating in order to provide maximum performance. The biggest mistake people make is going to big in one area and ignoring the others, i mean sure you can stick a monster cam in stock motor and it will sound pretty mean at idle but, as soon as you stomp on it she'll fall right on her face. Sorry for the long reply, just trying to give you some info.
Matt

 

thanks matt, i just remembered about a good running 351 w that a friend has. he had it in a 66 coupe but pulled it because it would hit torque over and hit the fenderwell when he got on it. i believe he priced it for $250.00. i might just buy it and tear it apart and work it over.

 

stroke that 351...

 

ive seen that? stoker? what exactly is that, a custom motor, rebuilt kit or what?

 

This might help a bit to explain strokers... http://www.mustangmonthly.com/techar..._engine_build/

The engine in my sig below is a 351 block...

 

To put it simply, you bore it over and increase the throw on the crankshaft, therefore increasing the stroke. This increase in stroke adn bore gives you more cubic inches. I would definatley consider building up the 351 your friend has, that way you can leave the 302 in your car so you can drive it for the time being, and the 351 will produce bigger numbers if your going high performance.
matt

 

buy and stroke that 351!!!!!!!

my cam specs are similar to moparmatts, but i have a lunati cam for a cleveland motor.