125 shot...should I throw on a cam?

Well guys, the winter months will soon be upon me here in Missouri, and I was wondering whether or not I should put a cam in my car.

Mods are in sig, car runs strong. No real problems. It IS my daily driver, but I can afford it to be down. I work at a car shop and have tinkered all my life, but most of my experience is rebuilding my rotary engine in my drag RX-7.

I was looking at the Hotcam kit with a dynotune at the end with some mildly ported heads I had ported locally here in town.

Is this going to be too ridiculous?
Should I do it?
Will the stock pushrods be strong enough with the cam AND the nitrous?
What about the lifters?

Car has got 80,xxx on it....she might be old, but will she hold? Cleanliness, and carefulness will not be an issue.

anyone??

go for it. get some hardened pushrods and a 255lph fuel pump and have at it.

good cam choice would be either a.) Custom ground or b.) XE 224/230. Hotcam might not be big enough for your taste although it is a great cam

Cam it. try a GM846 cam or a cam with a 114 lsa if you ever plan on spraying a larger shot

I most likely will not spray a bigger shot...but I say that now.

With the nitrous being used seldomly, will a normal cam like the 846 or the XE be good?

What should I look for in a nitrous cam? (Basically what makes a nitrous cam a N20 cam??)

Anyone in my boat already cam their car after spraying it? What did you guys go with?

Thanks Bandit and Offspring for the replies.

You could always do a leakdown test to make sure the engine is healthy. You shouldn't have any problems though. Make sure your fuel system is up to par and you have a good tune and you should have no issues. Its always a hit or miss though, just something to keep in mind.

What should I look for in a nitrous cam? (Basically what makes a nitrous cam a N20 cam??)

i have the same question

i have the same question

I did a search and got this..

Nitrous Oxide Cam Shafts

Choosing a Camshaft
Optimum cam timing for a nitrous motor will be different than optimum timing for that same motor off the bottle, so you will have to make a choice as to whether you want the most power with or without nitrous. Obviously if you are driving the car on the street most of the time, you will want the best power off the bottle. If you find that you can spare some power to make your car faster at the track, picking a camshaft to favor nitrous can make a substantial difference when nitrous is in use. If course it is a trade off, but usually the power that you make on the bottle, will be far greater than the amount lost off the bottle.

Pumping Losses
Nitrous oxide adds oxygen, much of which is in liquid form. So you can see that a large intake valve and port is not required or desirable. Larger intake ports cause more of the nitrous to turn to a gas and reduce the amount of normally aspirated power, if the nitrous takes up more room, there will be less room for air, reducing volumetric efficiency. Also, you do not want or need long intake duration or a very high lift, so the intake side of the cam does not need to be any different when nitrous is used. The exhaust is a totally different story. All that extra oxygen and fuel makes for a substantial increase in exhaust. How can the exhaust valves deal with this? It can't, pumping losses go out of sight. Much of the extra power made in the cylinders never makes it to the flywheel, because it is used to push out the exhaust. Since making the exhaust valve large enough and the port flow enough is impractical with most cylinder heads, we must take other actions to cut pumping losses (which is actually just a band aid fix).

Reducing Pumping Losses
The first obvious step is to use a dual pattern cam with longer exhaust duration. Opening the valve earlier will help by getting the valve open more and bleeding off some pressure before the piston starts moving up the bore. This does eat into the power stroke, but more power is freed up than would be made by holding it closed longer (the best solution would be a larger valve and better port). The blow down phase (overlap period) becomes very important in a nitrous engine, because the gasses has much greater velocity and can over scavenge, closing the valve exhaust valve a little earlier helps. Anytime you make more power by reducing pumping losses, you are freeing up horsepower that already existed in the cylinders. The engine will still experience the same loads, but more power will be put to the flywheel and less will be used to push out exhaust.

Camshaft Specs
As I said earlier, the intake needs to remain pretty much the same, but the exhaust needs more duration, an earlier opening point and an earlier closing point. To make this happen, you need to use a dual pattern cam with more exhaust timing, and a wider lobe separation angle. Cam's with 112-116° lobe separations are common is nitrous motors. To keep the intake timing the same, you must install the cam advanced, usually 6-8° advanced. The good things about this are that advancing a cam will bring more low-end (at a trade off of top-end) when running without the nitrous and the wider lobe center angle will also help idle and vacuum. Even the most radical nitrous profiles are usually pretty tame on the street. Ultra high lift cams are not need to make power with nitrous. On the exhaust side, the low lift flow is the most important thing, and must be dealt with much more seriously than high lift flow.

i have the same question
Yea, so do the cam manufactures of Nitrous cams......J/K:D ...........The whole "nitrous" cam thing is something that really dosn't need as much attention as it gets in choosing a cam in the street driven car performance world......get above a 250 HP shot and pumping losses (like was discussed) starts to become an issue(but sometimes then, not even VERY noticable of an issue)......everyone talks how cams down on a 106, 108, 110 LSA's don't make good nitrous cams.....simply NOT TRUE:cool:........So, if you plan on never really going above a 250 shot(or there about), then choose the cam that will work best for Naturally Aspirated performance where the car will spend 95% of it's time running...........Joe

Good God, Jesus and the wisemen...

That was some info that I was looking for.

Mosh, and Joe...thanks alot, that REALLY helped.

So basically, if I want a cam that is street saavy, but still good on N20 (even a small shot like a 100 or a 125) High lift is not going to be as desirable as the duration on the exhaust and the intake?

What impact will my lobe separation be? (What is it first of all, and how is this going to impact me on and off the bottle?)

I am going to go the same route as you. Thinking about getting the hotcam in late winter/ early spring. Hopefully someone has some good replies.

Mosh and Joe certainly had some nice input.

I just wish someone has had a couple of cams and found one that worked GREAT on the street, and complimented the bottle nicely.

If I found that, I would be money.