Modern MW Intake ports all seem to flow in the 355-380CFM range at .650-ish lift and this is very comparable to what either ported stock or Aftermarket LS3 Heads flow.

I don't know if anyone else has been following what Weingartner Racing has been conducting on Youtube, but it is very interesting.

He asked 20 Cam grinders to submit a Hydraulic roller cam for a 408" 94.03" x 4.00" LS with good aftermarket heads, a single plane intake and 11.5:1 , Dot to Dot, and ran all 23 cams back to back to back winner take all. Best Peak HP, Best Peak Tq. Best average 4k-7k Tq and HP. .660" max lift. Any lobe spread, duration, ground in Intake centerline you want to run.

Anyway, long story short, the cam that won (in all 4 categories!!) had one of the shortest Seat to Seat and .050 Intake durations and one of the shortest Intake closing events and the biggest degrees of additional Exhaust to Intake durations in the entire bunch.

What intrigued me is the majority of the other cams were much closer to how we Mopar Guys would cam a 500" MW motor given the same parameters but the one that won (not to brag or nothing ) was more like I have long been preaching (earlier ICL and intake centerline, more exhaust duration)

i think what maybe what we miss with these bigger ports and longer strokes is we give away too much Dynamic compression after bottom Dead center, the port velocities and cross sections are so much better than what we've been used to. And the longer the stroke the further the crank pushes the piston back up the bore for every degree past BDC. And as we know to make HIGH RPM HP the port velocity has to be high enough for the charge to pack the mass of air/fuel past the intake valve and trap it as the piston is trying to push it back out. This is where I think we give up a lot of torque, when the velocity in the port isn't that high (or isn't as high as we think it is because we're used to a smaller port) that extra ABDC can be doing us more harm than good in terms of actually turning the tires down the track.

anyway, I just thought it was interesting, because there were a lot of very well known and respected engine builders in the competition. And TBH some of the results were pretty humbling but by the same measure, the best to worst (except for a couple of outliers) were all within 15-20 of one another. and there was no individual "season to taste" tuning for each individual cam allowed.

LS motors to our motors isn't exactly "apples to apples" but in a way (in terms of port cross section to swept volume) there are still many similarities. At best,the results of this test may be something we can learn from and apply (maybe with more experimentation of our own) and at worst, something that is interesting.

Just thoughtI would pass it along, it's the most interesting thing on the net I've seen in a long while.

Even better that Bobby, the dude that won it, is 26 years old!

I'd seen him on Dr. Tunemall's Youtube channel but didn't know he worked for Cam motion (or how ever you spell it).

It is interesting to be sure.

The engines are hard to compare. So many things make little differences that add up.
Targeted RPM.
Valve angles.
Bowl shape.
Runner shape.
Valve to cylinder wall clearance.
Width of the lifter valley means different runner lengths.
Longer stroke changes cylinder pressures and pulses per degree of rotation.
Intake shape.
Valvetrain stability.
Cam core diameter.
Lifter angle.
Rocker ratio.

It really stacks up.

Knowing performance is tied heavily to valve events there is plenty to learn by looking at his results. Trying to time them to your combo is everything.
Guys have been over cammimg engines for years. Now, we have the technology to understand what is going on in there and rules have been rewritten.

I do like his work even if he rambles more than I do.

Yeah not apples to apples.

But there are ratios and the head flow charts at various lift points that are very similar. And non Siamese ports mean you wind up with both long and short runners which can either broaden the torque curve …or kill it

Since I’ve always built more street oriented motors I always look at how much power I think the chassis can handle and then the head and compression to see how much potential power I can make. From there I often can the motor for the target horsepower with as little duration and overlap as I think I can get away with, knowing the smaller I go to get thee is generally going to give me the best overall torque and drivability.

The biggest takeaway here that is relatable is the duration spread. Generally with most BBM heads I’ve seen the intakes get better but most of our motors don’t have really great exhausts.

I don't think the old stuff is over camed. The new LS and gen 3 Hemi ports and chambers are way better. Optimal port flow needs less cam. When you see a gen 3 head that flows similar to a ported -1 with a smaller valve and smaller bore. That tells the story.
Doug

When the Trick Flow heads first came out I spent a bunch of time on the dyno trying to find the best cam. Dwyane helped out a bunch and I ended up using the cam that he recommended. It was a 264/268 solid roller and I ended up making right at 800 hp in a pump gas 470. I just ran my 514 ford with the Kaase heads and it made 860 hp with a 272/280 cam. Both Kaase and Mike Jones told me that good heads such as the SR71 don't need big cams, and they don't need a lot of spread.

Efficient ports and appropriate valve sizing doesn't need a bunch of camshaft duration. BBM heads don't meet either criteria

Why doesn't somebody make a BBM head with an LS type combustion chamber instead of 1958 Desoto chambers? 10 degrees minimum less timing needed has to be good for at least a 10% more power at the same RPM and fuel rate as anything currently available. It's free power and the extra mfg cost would be negligible at best because you have to make a pattern/mold regardless.

It would raise the power ceiling on stock blocks I think too. Less timing, less chance for detonation, less/no cap walk.

Kevin

b1 stuff has a pretty nice chamber even the the b1bs.

The guy who won had a lot of dyno experience with those engines, and he used it to his advantage for sure. Once you know where the boundaries of what doesn't really work as good on a certain type of engine are it makes finding the sweet spot a lot easier. Some of those guys admitted to having little to no LS experience so they had their work cut out. Just because they did not place higher doesn't mean they don't know anything about engines they just don't know the LS stuff as good as they could have. If your building something max effort it appears you need to cozy up with people that have ran numerous cams thru dyno engines similiar to what you are building.

Makes me wonder how many off the shelf cams are out there now that have been in production for many many years that are essentially outdated since cylinder heads, and intakes, and carburetors have advanced? If the product still sells it's not like the cam company feels a need to re-examine it or improve upon it.

As someone who has watched several of Vizards LSA videos it's interesting that a cam with a low LSA was the winner. Some of the people who participated in that have made videos saying that LSA doesn't mean anything to an engine, but perhaps it really does?

B1 is what I would use for max power for a wedge.it would also be aftermarket block.

I wonder why they didn't post the power for the control cam from TSP? I heard an interview with the original cam guy at TSP. The amount of dyno testing they were doing early on was insane, at some point all he did all day was dyno engines.

Eric Weingarter is local to me. I had him freshen up the VJ on my W2s a few years ago. He actually complemented the port work that Shady Dell did to my W2s. It is interesting to see him on YouTube because in person he is a pretty quiet guy.

I wonder how these would perform in a car or if they are hero grinds geared for exactly the task.

I’m no expert but I think yes - for some reason Mopar people seem to like small ports. They will add a ton of cam timing to make power, but they are afraid to go up in port size because they think they will lose torque

But I bought some Trick Flow 270s for my stock stroke 440 to replace my Stealth head but haven’t swapped them yet.. I watch Eric’s channel, and was thinking pretty much your thought process on how it compares. But I don’t think theres any way I can make 650 HP with those heads at 440 cubics inches with a 235 @ 0.050 hydraulic roller cam. Definitely not with 1.75 inch headers.

But I’ve been debating running the Racer Brown ST-21 (520 lift and 254 @ .050) I have in there and living with whatever power it makes vs buying the trick flow 600/600 243/247 hydraulic roller. I still think i’d be looking like more in the 600-620 HP range if I swap to the roller.

Engine masters made 589 HP with a mid 500 lift comp roller and 235 @ .050 and a super victor intake. Maybe at .650 lift it would have made 30+ more? Maybe with 650 lift and a more aggressive profile it would make 50 more? The 1.7 rockers help too.

Also, I think many of the standard port size intakes don’t actually flow enough to support some of the better heads available now. But again I don’t really know anything.

Don’t forget when people say Big Block Mopars have small block Chevy size ports they’re not lying. They do, and theres an excellent reason for that: they were originally designed for 350 and 361 cubic inch engines.

The engine doesn't know what lobe separation is ground onto the camshaft, only the valve events it sees. LSA is more of a marketing tool these days. It's generally easier for people to get their around, rather than discussing the valve openning and closing events.

[quote

The engine doesn't know what lobe separation is ground onto the camshaft, only the valve events it sees. LSA is more of a marketing tool these days. It's generally easier for people to get their around, rather than discussing the valve openning and closing events. [/quote]
Exactly. Two cams, both with 114 LSA. FIRST thought, similar. Now with .050 duration specs
Cam A int @ .050, 224. Exhaust @ .050, 236. Ovetlap @ .050, 2 degrees
CAM B int @ .050 286. Exhaust @ .050. 302. Overlap at .050 , 66 degrees.
Now to make LSA even more worthless;
Difference in valve lash.
Rocker ratio
Lobe ramp rates
Valvetrain compression
Whatever i missed!

Plenty of people say it does matter though so I'm unsure what to think. Shop around for a circle track cam and you'll find many are cut on 106-108 cores so they are doing it for a reason, which might be for midrange torque rolling out of a corner exit? People are so used to the larger LSA cams that they don't consider the smaller LSA ones, which may be a way to pick up some free power depending on the combination.

I've read that years ago off the shelf cams with smaller LSA were more common, but then people starting becoming cam experts and picking out their own cams from the Summit or Jegs catalog so the cam companies moved to 110-112 LSA to keep people from getting something that has too much duration, or getting one where the valves might touch the pistons.

Here is a test of just LSA numbers being moved that is interesting.

https://youtu.be/JUHwVCDjonU?si=FTT1dHWD0ZpDL22M

The thing I have learned not mainly from Mopars but from messing with some pretty quick SB fords is, as I mentioned before the easiest way to see if you are over-cammed for your heads is to advance the cam 4 degrees and if it ET's quicker AND picks up MPH....you either have too much duration after BDC and/or you are not generating enough intake port velocity to "Super-Pack" the cylinder as it comes back up the bore...where the Air/fuel Mass and velocity offsets the loss static displacement. I think with BB Mopars....Maybe the valve shrouding (not being on the bore centerline) is more of a hinderance to where even the Ideal Port Cross section is hamstringed by being so close to the bore which kills the flow window past the valve. A lower duration maybe keeps the velocity higher at the point where the shrouding starts diminishing the flow.

I've also noted that big inch high compression engines that are mathematically 'Under ported' (if they are otherwise unrestricted) will flow and produce more power per cube than the CFM/HP calculations would lead you to believe.

I would certainly contribute to help fund a Moparts Cam test on a 11:1 TF 270 headed motor similar to the Weingartner test. Maybe we can get some cam grinder to Participate as well.

I did a cam test in an 11:1 470 with TF270 heads. I tested one cam that was too small, one that was too big and one that worked really well. My guess is that the "perfect" cam for that engine would be very close to the one that worked really well.
I also tested four different rocker arm ratios and lots of different intake manifolds.