Shon Herron

When's this beast going to be on the track?

Shon Herron

Is a dyno graph what sales these things?
I see 600+ dyno graphs all day from the Ford camp but not many can run with the bolt on LT1 car (ET wise since you dont like MPH comparisons), so to me the graph is nothing more than a picture.

I honestly have quit keeping up with the LE set ups and seeing what they run or put down b/c when I was reading them no one was happy. This is not a knock on LE at all, just that his combos come up alot and there is always something 'wrong'. But on the other hand, I have not read where Ai customers were dissatisfied with the end results.

Javier97Z28

Well, just as a note on that... aside from something that was my own fault (rocker came loose, allowing a valve to smack a piston)... the car ran great. As my sig notes, my tranny was slipping, and I had an injector leaking that I didn't find until I was at the track (getting ready for the last pass where I finally broke). I still managed to pick up about 5 mph over my previous setup (from similar weather) with a not much larger cam than I had (definitely more lift, but not much more duration) and Lloyd's heads. I wish I would have had a chance to run it more, but we'll see what it does on my new shortblock with an LE3 cam now.

It sucks that more people don't run the combos that are advertised as much.. you see more about installs than results, I'll give it that.. I'm a track hound though, and once I get it up and running (I still need to replace the tranny), you should see some good numbers out of it.

SStrokerAce

Have ya'll realized that Ai is not a sponsor anymore? That might have something to do with the results not being posted here..... FWIW it's easier to screw up something in a install than it is to get it all correct, you can have a problem from the wrong part to not tightening down the rockers enough and that can easily cause issues.

Bret

Javier97Z28

Not to mention you (Bret) and Lloyd are two of the most helpful people I have ever met on a forum.. and this is well after the sale of the product.

526 SS 96

Results... http://videos.camaroz28.com/search/9...904A07731B.htm

I like AI. I guess if you can't bolt on a set of heads and set valves, you shouldn't be turning the wrenches. It would be far cheaper, easier, and faster to pay a shop to do that for you, not to mention the saved agrivation. Constantly broken/ stupidly assembled (these two are strongly corrilated) camaro's & TA's make all F-body guys look bad. For the love of god don't give the Import guys any more amo. The problem people run into is that they want to cut corners. Guys don't want to spend an extra $100-200on AI heads, yet they buy stupid stuff like: air foils, MAF's, coolant addative, junk chinese cranks and rods, and other forms of snake oil, all because some one on internet told them they could go .100 quicker. All of which could cost you into the high $100's to low $1,000's depending on your bank account tolerance (or stupidity). Heads and cam are by far the most important decision in a project. AI has some realy sweet state of the art equipment in their shop (I know I was there a month ago), like the seat and guide machine that is used by F1 teams. Plus all of the machine and assembly work is done in house by 1 very dedicated perfectionist. I wonder how the 'other' head guys handle this very critical phase.

Finally this garbage about 'trap speed not being important' is just that garbage. 60' to 330' times are an illustration of traction. Trap speed is all about how hard the car pulls. When my car was mostly sock my et would vary by .7-.8 but my trap speed was always within .6 MPH. This was true at every level of the cars life. My bike is the same way. I'll take trap over et any day, street cars are way cooler than drag cars.

SStrokerAce

FWIW a little Impala results.... 11.64 @ 119 NA

http://impalassforum.com/noncgi/ulti...c;f=1;t=010549

These guys are really flipping out about Lloyds stuff. Why not the guy has one of the fastest NA Impala SS's with 354 cubes, Hyd Roller cam and stock LT1 heads.


FWIW.... you can have the best seat and guide machine in the world and still put a bad VJ in the heads. Some of the best head porters I know use everything from a Serdi to a Bridgeport mill with a head fixture attachment. They both turn out killer VJ's if you can use them properly. It's not the machines that make things work, it's the operators. Same reason NEXTEL Cup teams have their cams made on old dinosaur manual cam grinders at Comp and not the new Okuma CNC cam grinders.

Bret

Javier97Z28

Well, I guess you are just perfect and have never made a mistake in your life. I've set lash countless times, I'm assuming my issue was a loose rocker, nothing else seems obvious. My car ran fine for 3 years on my previous cam setup just fine

SStrokerAce

Dude, I saw the cam... something got loose, knocked the dog bone out and let the lifters turn.

BTW if Stumpy had your new cam in his Imp he would go even faster!

Bret

526 SS 96

Rick Abare has a sweet AI car http://www.advancedinduction.com/
10.20@134.8 is haulin the mail.

You are right, a good machine in the hands of an unqualified person will = bad work. However, that is not the case with AI. Phil is more than qualified, and a nice machine in his hands is only going to result in higher quality products.

I don't really understand what happened to the engine that broke the cam and valve. If the engine ran fine for 3 years, then the cam was changed.... then it bent a valve and killed a cam lobe? I don't really think that was a loose rocker arm issue, there is a much bigger problem there. I don't want to pick on you, and we ALL make mistakes (even me), but this is a prime example of how installation cost from a qualified shop would be far less than the headache you have now. I am sorry to hear it, and I hope your next attempt is sucessful.

SStrokerAce- How fast is your f-body, and what kind of set up do you have?

I made some changes to my setup and I am looking foreward to getting out there in about a month (if all goes well) and getting some better times. I don't think my 11.96was bad for the third pass on that set up. The clutch started giving out when I turned the bottle on, but it did manage a 10.57 (vid available).

FastZinTennessee

What the hell is this thread about again????

Javier97Z28

Well since we're swaying way off topic anyways....

Wasn't just a cam swap, was a heads/cam install. Really, it's a pretty straight forward thing. All was done in a clean manner, everything was torqued to spec. Unless something *broke,* which no shop could avoid without seeing a problem, I can't find any other reasoning than a loose rocker. The way I see it:

Rocker comes loose, lifter looses pushrod tension and is allowed to bounce on cam. Bouncing lifter has enough force now to come too far out of the bore and bend the lifter spider. Spider bent, dogbone is loose, allows lifter to spin in bore. Free bangin' lifter could also cause a valve to shoot way too far and allow it to smack the piston.

Oh well, better luck next time for me I guess. This buildup will get a full valvetrain geometry check, as well as piston to valve clearance check. I can't think of anything a shop would do over that, and to me, working on the car is part of the hobby.... I wouldn't have the same fun paying someone else to do all the work..

1racerdude

Javier,
You know what happeded to it so don't pay attention to these internet mechanics. Just fix it and call it good and tighten the poly locks good next time. People with 12.0 cars are always smarter than anybody else,Sooooooo.

Javier97Z28

will do muh friend

1racerdude