Thread: VE with stock cams= good daily

I can not express the importance of having cars tuned. It kills me when people put cars together and slap on a custom tuned ECU and expect the car to run perfect.

People wonder why some cars make more power than others.

TUNE THE DAMN THINGS!!

lol, I get it dude
Best to give up now!

FYI, the graph I posted above were both tuned by the same person, with very little change to the tune on the low lobes (being so similarly specced)

I think what people are trying to get across is that the tune on your motor matters, and so does how you are planning to use your car. When I tuned my SE-R (90% track use) with N1's for max power across the curve the low cams felt very flat and the high cams were awesome. The dyno graph is very smooth without a noticeable "bump" at the crossover. On the track, you can drive on the high cam almost all the time because you are "on it". Daily driving is an entirely different story. The VE in our NX has a much more streetable tune, and the graph is not quite as smooth since both cams switch together. When you overlay the 2 cars, they make almost equal power on the low cams before the crossover, and the NX makes more power early on the high cam because it switches first at 5100. The SE-R has separate switches at 5600 and 6300 and has an extremely smooth graph and absolutely crushes the NX past 6500 on the top end. Same cams on both VE's and both with 3" exhaust, but different intake & header on each car and a corresponding different tune. Tuning definitely makes a difference.

Yeah but Joe that is not the best comparison. You have an expensive intake manifold and an expensive header. The tune didnt make that big of a difference.
It made your car smoother and tuning is great but your power came from those parts.

And I love the car with stock cams.


SER-ican.... I will modify what you wrote.

Dont just tune the car. Dyno the car to see where you are at.
I have seen 200whp out of a JWT with no tuning. I have also seen 160 out of a Jwt.
Dyno and then tune.

It is nice to see somebody on this forum uses their brain and personal research to come to a conclusion...
What you posted makes alot of sense and is the honest truth.
Who really gives a damn about power over 6500 on a daily driver. I have slowed my driving down alot recently and the car just feels great how it is.
I may toss in the N1s later to mix it up. But some of these guys need to be realistic with their builds on a car that is supposed to get you to work.

Thanks alot.

of course if its a daily then the N1's will be wasted, if your not going to drive over 5000rpm then its a waste of money changing.

What I have an issue with is people saying that the std 20ve cams are better performing than the N1's on the low lobes, when its clearly not the case.

Agreed in that the better parts made it possible to take advantage of more of the cams potential. Tuning still had to be done. When we first put it together it ran like crap. We spent several hours on the dyno with a safc to get it to run decently. I took a road trip to CT and had Pete tune the CalumRT and then it ran well. Rodney - that would be the way it was when you drove it.

Back on topic - Sticking with a stock ve works as a daily, and we all agree that every change in cams requires retuning.

Repeat.

Plain old SR16 cams would be best for the street.

Plain old SR16VE cam specs
Low lift/low duration intake: 7.1mm/200 degrees
Low lift/low duration exhaust: 7.95mm/244 degrees
High lift/high duration intake: 11.1mm/280 degrees
High lift/high duration exhaust: 11.1/280 degrees

On the low lift exhaust cam, it is promoting scavenging and gets hot, dirty, filthy gases out faster.

Really? All SR16 cams dynos ive seen had worst low end.