I had a head gasket blow last week so while it was apart I decided to have my Hotcam kit installed springs roller rockers and everything. Well got it back today. Not too happy. At low RPM's I have a TERRIBLE hesitation, also have a decent amount of popping in the exhaust. After she gets moving she flies but getting her there she feels like she'll fall apart. At the time it went back together I had a new timing chain installed,ALL new gaskets, and new plugs, new plugwires roughly 2 months ago. Before the head gasket blowing it ran like a champ. My question is do I just need a PCM tune badly or could they have put the opti on incorrectly? This is the 4th F-body cam install these guys have done I know oneof the guys they did it for before and his runs perfectly. I know these guys really well and trust them or they would have NEVER touched my baby. Any ideas would be GREATLY appreciated.

 

Any advice?

 

This is pretty hard to do wrong on an LT1, but I wonder if the cam is not timed right....at work one day a guy installed a timing belt on an Infinity J30 with the cam off by one tooth on the cam gear, and the thing ran like crap. I doubt highly it is the tune...I had to run mine around about a week with a stock OBDII ecu, and it seemed to run smoothly and strongly enough.

 

Valves not adjusted properly or timing off a tooth.

 

Assuming everything was installed correctly, the next step would be programming.

 

Well the timing was my first thought when they told me the problem,I asked and they said everything was lined up correctly but I can't help to think that it feels like it's timed slightly incorrectly. But if it was would everything smooth out after like 1500-2000rpm's? Well I guess I'll try the programming since it needs done anyway and see if it fixes the hesitation. If anyone else has any suggestions feel free to post 'em.

 

I dont think it is programming because I ran the stock program for 3mo. in my old hotcam setup no problem.....I gained more hp when I got the tuning done but the car ran pretty good on stock tune.

 

Valves too tight/not adjusted properly
Check for vacuum leaks as well.

 

It sounds to me since your hearing a backfire in your exhaust that the cam timing is off a tooth or the valves have been wrongly adjusted. get your valves adjustment checked and if thats ok its definatly the cam timing.

 

or actually i just read the part about it smoothing out at higher rpm, that is your cam timing, off one tooth will cause crappy idle and hesitation but smoother running at higher rpm