I am planning on getting a hotcam kit pretty soon, and was planning atleast a 2800 stall, but now due to the F*#ckin insane gas prices, im trying to keep the stock stall, but was wondering, will I face any driveability problems with the stock stall and hotcam? What will be the performance loss, and mileage difference between stock, and a 2800 stall. What is a good stall size overall for that cam? I also heard you will see little or no improvement on any stall smaller than 2800. Is this true?

 

I have been running a hot cam for about a year now and I still have the stock torque converter in my car. My car is in need of a tune badly but it still feels alot strong then it did before the hot cam.

 

Worried about gas prices, get an import. Wanna wake your car up, get a Vig. 3200 or a Yank 3600. Just make sure it still has the lock-up as most of them do.

 

I'm running a 3K RPM 10" Hughes convertor with the hot-cam kit and LOVE it. Have had several people say that the car should have come from factory with that convertor since it works so well!

 

I have a 3rd gen but with a crate Vortec engine with a hotcam. So it's probably similar to an LT1 with a hotcam in hp & tq.

I have a stall 2400-2800 and my mileage hasn't suffered too much. I kept the lockup conv. so it's pretty efficient. I don't think you'll notice a significant increase in gas expense if you did go with a stall.

 

I'm assuming this is your daily driver? I've been thinking the same thing about mileage, only because I get poor gas mileage now, otherwise I wouldn't care too much. The consensus seems to be that your highway mpg won't drop much but your city mpg will noticeably.

 

Although im not running a hotcam yet, i used to have a 3k stall, now im running a performabuilt 2k stall, and im averaging 22-26 mpg on mid-grade, better on premium.

 

it will be fine. I ran my setup with a stock converter before my m6 swap

 

I have a 96 lt4 engine with the hotcam that I replaced my lt1 (its a 96 corvette btw) with when I blew it up. I didn't change the stock torque converter, but had madz28 adjust the shift points, rev limiter and fuel cutoff points higher and firmer. Also, raised the idle to around 850 rpms. It has a minor creep issue at the higher idle, and im sure a higher stall would cure that...but it isn't even an issue with me. It's not so much different than it was stock, but it is so much more fun. Oh, madz28 did a really good mail order tune that really made the car much more driveable and powerful. You can see my car on his site

I vote, keep the factory stall. I decided to keep mine until I blow this tranny, then go ahead with the new converter. My tranny had 80k miles on it at the time of the new motor and it still is tight after 93k

Good luck
sam

 

Imo keep the factory cam and put a stall in first. If you do it right and get a high quality stall you wont notice much change in normal driving but when you nail it there will be a gigantic difference.

When I installed my 355 I didnt have the cash to rebuild my trans and get a stall. I still didnt when my trans took a dump, but I rebuilt it and put in a 3200 stall when it did. The result was me beating my personal best with the stock converter by 0.5 in the 1/4 on my first pass. So far after a few tanks of gas, my mileage drop has been almost nothing. I get within half a mpg of what I did with the stock stall.

With an a4 in my experience a stall should be one of your first mods. The performance increase is HUGE and you dont get the little quirks of the lt1 when its cammed. Sure it doesnt sound crazy like it does with a cam, that just means people wont know why you smoked em or expect it.

 

I haven't done my hotcam yet, but from the results of the ones i've seen, hot cam with 2600 stall, is the BEST. any bigger and you LOSE power. and 3200-3600 stall on a hotcam, is absolutely a STUPID set up, when you build a car, you have to use stuff that works together. a 2800+ stall you start getting out of the power band too soon and run slower times. Now for a stock convertor, it is fine to do, but you will not get as much gain, (not a huge diff. though) and you will notice the car "lurching" You will have to hold a little tighter on the brake at a stop because it will want to roll.

 

Maybe you haven't been in a car with a quality converter. No bigger than a 2600 stall, I guess alot of us are going about this the wrong way.

 

I agree; a 3000+ stall in a DD w/ street tires is tarded' imo.

 

Seems like alot of the guys who say don't go to a stall don't have em. If they did they wouldn't be as worried about it. You can't tell my car is stalled unless you get into it pretty hard. The only thing scary about a stall is the $800+ it takes to do it right.

I can explain why a nice high quality higher rpm stall converter will destroy a stocker if absolutely need be. Fwiw i've seen stock cars with 3200 and 3600 stalls beat the living **** out of cammed cars with a stock stall. Half a second is not a small improvement, and for this you trade maybe 100-200rpm to get the car moving and its exactly like stock once you get past 45 and it locks up. If you put a lower rear gear in it like 3.73 and program the thing to stay in lower gears just a bit longer you will be hard pressed to tell you have one in the car until you push it.

wht94formula, how exactly is a 3200 going to get you out of the hotcams power band more than a 2600 is? The last one I dyno tuned power didnt peak until 6200rpm and hung on till 6400.