Thread: Kelford 184-C on the Dyno - Progress so Far.

We went to the dyno today to play with cam timing on the Kelford 184-C. Tuning by Paul 'The Alienprobe' Hansen who has tuned many of our VE engines & Soichi Taite who owns ST Hitec & is a former Senior Technician with Nissan Japan.

We tried the cam settings at +4 I / +2 E then +4 I / -2 E & Finally both at 0 / 0 (crank degrees) & properly tuned the car for every setting but... none of those changes made any difference. Once tuned, every cam setting peaked the same whp and the same torque at the same RPM. She's still peaking in the early 7,000rpm range so I think it's time for some breathing improvements. Adrian is organising a couple of sets of ASP headers for us so there's a start, remember these are new cams to the market so it's a work in progress & not a final result. Once we've extracted the best we can from them I will re-fit my Franklin Stage 4s and do a comparison.

A lot of you know the specs but here they are again:

Kelford stage 1 ported head flowing 272 intake & 191 exhaust @ .500 on standard valves. CNC valve job (head previously flowed 266 & 180). Head from 1997 Primera engine.
Kelford 184-C cams (previously Franklin Stage 4)
Kelford adjustable cam gears
Kelford springs
370cc injectors
8cw Crank
SR16VE pistons shaved 1mm to make just over 12.5 compression
Engine balanced
3.8kg Precision Engineering flywheel
Exedy 5 puk clutch
UR crank & waterpump pullies
Std intake coated with HPC thermal barrier coating, phenolic spacers.
Nismo FPR & guage
Walbro 255lh Fuel pump
Fujitsubo headers with secondaries shortened from 21" to 14"
3" exhaust bolted directly to Fuji secondaries with transition, Fuji single pipe removed.
3" alloy intake, Blox velocity stack
Bikirom ECU
4.1 gearbox with Nismo Mechanical LSD

Dyno run in wkw:







Now this is cool... Soichi asked if I would like him to show my dyno in American SAE correction figures. I'm not going to say this is accurate to what I would've got in the USA but it's there for information anyway.

If you play around with the cam gears and the peak HP does not change neither does torque, your header is not right for the engine. So there is improvement in that area.

As far as the dynos go I think it is close to being spot on.

152KW = 205HP which is probaly one of the pulls on the first graph.

So I would defenatly say that the crossover to WHP is correct at 216 WHP because your highest HP number is 216 WHP and your lowest seems to be 205 WHP on the second graph.

Now are the 184C cams designed to drop in or are they a cam that has to be shimmed.

If Adrian cam make these cams as a drop in with the base circles set from the factory cams then we have a winner.

The key for a cam to be sold to the masses is a cam that is run off of factory base circles. Once the cam is 100% drop in the masses will buy them because they will not have to depend on anyone to have the head shimmed up which can be a painfull and tedious process.

By the way has anyone at Kelford gotten a chance to look at the SR20VE 20V L lobes?

We were thinking the same thing about the headers Dre, If I wasn't going to put the ASP on I would be chopping those secondaries even further to 11 inches.

Those are actually both 152.6 wkw runs but the second graph is Soichi switching the correction method from DIN to SAE. I think we're definitely over 200whp but whether we're as high as 216whp I don't know.

Unfortunately these are built motor cams & from what I've seen with people putting the Franklin Stage 4 into unopened blocks, I would say they would also be awful for most people.

With compression of 11.5 or higher the Franks go really well but on a normal engine they make about the same HP as SR16VE cams but with way less torque... these are bigger so I'm sure they'd be the same.

They do need shimming too, my engine builder said that in his experience Nissan were pretty much drop in, Kelford were close but needed some shimming & Franklin needed the most shimming.

I think they would go really well on something like... a SR23VE. Now who has one of those around here?

Clint talk to those guys and see if they can get the base circles to match up with Nissan. I know for a fact if they can these cams would sell because 75 % of the guys dont have the time and know how to do this and if this small problem can be addressed we can have a winner with both these companies.

Just the small things can make a big diffrence and bring alot of confidence to buyers of these cams.

Fair enough, I'll be sending the dyno to Kevin next week so will ask him. This engine was shimmed 3 times. Kelford orginally shimmed it & then when the head went on the block it was checked & adjusted. After I ran the engine in it went back to get checked again & some minor tweaks were made.

Kelford don't have 20Vs as far as I know but I may be able to loan Winkie's set & send those to them. They're currently in his car but he has expressed interest in trying my FS4 so if he does I will borrow his 20Vs.

Snickers - Do you think the ASP will be enough or should I be perhaps looking at something a little more custom?

An ASP would definitely be a step in the right direction clint but one of Charles 4into1's would probably be better. IMO anyway

WOW 152wkw's is HUGE!!! especially on standard intake! From what i have seen and comparing Aussie, New Zealand and American dyno's i think the 216 sae corrected whp is right on the money.

i think your intake may be the choke point and could be why the cam timing makes no difference, could also be the header or possibly both. When you did the flow testing of the head, did you do one with the intake on?

great work! standard base circles and something similar to a 20v low lobe and i might have to jump on a set

We are shimming are 184's a bit tighter than stock specs, we measured these cams on a 100% stock motor and found the specs to be slightly better than N1's but knew we could do a little better.

I think 216hub hp is great and I am thinking more than likely with an intake manifold and a nice header you could easily move that number upward. Did you test the Franklin's on the same dyno? Do you have a comparison?

Also the ASP header will do wonders for you considering the power it makes over a fuji in the other thread. I think, if you can, you should get the header on and test that with no other changes just to see how your power curve looks.

From degreeing these cams we are definitely seeing that they shouldn't be run at 0,0 so once you get a chance you can let us know how things turn out for you.

I did see your results with the cam timing so was expecting to pick up power by advancing the intake & retarding the exhaust, are your 184-Cs are the previous design or the new design? Will have to try a change of cam settings again once the header is on.

Hopefully the new header will allow these to breathe to their peak so I can accurately calculate the ideal intake runner length & get a new intake made too. I won't be changing anything else until the new header goes on so it will be a good test.

No comparison with the FS4 on this dyno yet & although I ran them previously, too many things have changed to fairly compare my previous FS4 results with these right now. After the rest of the engine is sorted I'll do a comparison run, apples for apples.

CA18 - Kelford had the intake & flowed it but they don't give flow figures for the head & intake together. Kevin is happy with the std throttle body size but didn't like the rest of it so is encouraging me to do the intake once the headers are sorted. Any custom intake I get made up will retain the std TB. I'll be more focused runner design & length rather than making anything bigger.