Building a 3.0L engine

No, new cars have a *tapered* male fitting on the end of the cam, and an exact copy tapered female fitting in the sprocket,

Taper lock is as old as the hills, same principle employed by railway wheels to provide grip, and in machine tool chucks. Molecular effect or something. However I've seen an Alfa engine that relied on the bolt torque and was advised on this direction on the basis of several others doing the same.

As to the "drenched in oil" comment - it's the same argument about putting copper grease on wheel nuts or not "because it makes them more prone to coming undone" - bullocks, because it also allows you to apply a higher pressure for the same torque making the "locking" near enough identical. Anyway, the pressures involved are *slightly* higher than the oil was designed to lubricate.

Whatever the science, I've built engines this way with a 100% record so far. You can laugh at me when one fails.

Darren: The Adaptronic has a knock sensor input. Calibrating it is the troublesome area with no clearly defined procedure. A lot of ECUs out there, incl Emerald, don't bother with a knock sensor input.

As to the "drenched in oil" comment - it's the same argument about putting copper grease on wheel nuts or not "because it makes them more prone to coming undone" - bullocks, because it also allows you to apply a higher pressure for the same torque making the "locking" near enough identical. Anyway, the pressures involved are *slightly* higher than the oil was designed to lubricate.

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Well no... since when do car wheels have only one wheel nut in the centre holding the wheel on?

Im not talking about the bolt coming loose with the oil, Im talking about that the surface area of friction you are using is very small, and that surface is lubricated to start with, and continuously in lubrication.

Maybe the cam bolt is holding it fine, or maybe its slipping half a degree every week Are you going to take your engine apart regularly to check? Seeing as these engines are non interferance people won't instantly realise their timing is going out..

Seeing as we can stretch timing chains, most people are aware of how much loading goes on against the cam sprockets, especially this being a single cam engine driving all the valves, which have meaty spring rates due to the size of the valves.

The saving grace of the newer engines with the taper fit cams being external pulley is that a visual check is quite easy, but even better, on cars such as the new VW's which run this system, they use a crank and a cam angle sensor. If the cam slips in anyway, it is referenced against the crank trigger signal and brings up a fault code light up immediately on the dash to indicate an engine problem.

End of the day Martin, all you have to do is set up the cam as you have, mark its position, and fit a new keyway for security - its not really too much effort is it...

Sounds a logical conclusion.

Can the adaptronic take a feed from the standard knock sensor to get over any variations & unexpected pinking?

Yes, not a problem. Using the logging built into the ecu, you can also work around engine natural engine noise than can cause false knock sensing.

End of the day Martin, all you have to do is set up the cam as you have, mark its position, and fit a new keyway for security - its not really too much effort is it...

When I set my Cams up, I used offset dowels that I had made up by a local machine shop to suit the 'change' from standard that I required, cost me £10.00 each, but for £20 it gave me peace of mind!

£20 for doing a proper job....thats outrageous!!! £20 is a decent night in the pub......theres more to life than having a car that works properly....I'd know!!

End of the day Martin, all you have to do is set up the cam as you have, mark its position, and fit a new keyway for security - its not really too much effort is it...

I suggest you give it a go yourself before passing comment Once again, I'll stick to my guns, no the sprockets are not "drifting" ! Do me a favour...

End of the day Martin, all you have to do is set up the cam as you have, mark its position, and fit a new keyway for security - its not really too much effort is it...

I suggest you give it a go yourself before passing comment Once again, I'll stick to my guns, no the sprockets are not "drifting" ! Do me a favour...

Well personally, as I supply products and services to the general public, I know full well about all my liability issues, so I make sure that any product or modification meets or exceeds the original design, so if something does go wrong (god forbid) and Im up in the dock in court, I can put my hand on my heart and be sure I have not cut any corners and or exceeded the original design specification.

So, no, I won't 'give it a go'. Likewise I don't think anybody else here would expect me to either...

I know full well that on a 5 stud wheel, 4 bolts will hold it on fine, but I still put the 5th bolt back in.

There are some very good adhesives around these days They can even hold the tiles on a space shuttle .................

There are some very good adhesives around these days They can even hold the tiles on a space shuttle .................

and they have been known to fall off too

There are some very good adhesives around these days They can even hold the tiles on a space shuttle .................

and they have been known to fall off too

I think that's his point...

What I'm saying is what you're suggesting isn't as easy as you make it look. A lot of what you've written is "easy" until you try doing it and making it work. eg high lift cams in an atmo. Been there, done it. Built high lift cams into high comp engines, re-timed cams manually, GOT IT WRONG, broke things, done it again, fixed it, etc etc etc. It's easy to talk.

Easy to sue as well!

What I'm saying is what you're suggesting isn't as easy as you make it look. A lot of what you've written is "easy" until you try doing it and making it work. It's easy to talk.

But thats what we have specialist engineering companies for...

I made my own offset dowels that you can turn to exactly degree up your cams . It required drilling the 7mm sprocket hole to 10 mm which gave you an allowance of 1.5 mm either side of its centerline.
And a screwdriver slot in the end of the dowel.

hi guys

back to the original topic. I still have that 88 GTA in my garage putting out way over 400 HP (DIN, on the wheels). The engine is basically stock internally and has survived around 5 years of driving and club racing. So I cant see a reason to tamper with the Z7U, unless you are prepared to seriously upgrade the drivetrain. Just work on the intake and exhaust sides and a reliable 300 HP is easy.

By the way, to make the engine "rev", dont let the boost drop with engine speed. This sure is a problem with the original setup. A way do do this is to get a larger wastegate actuator or you can instal some kind of device, that raises boost around 5 grand.