Street Cam

[Bo Dillingham]

In a previous question about building a 327/300 HP for the street, Tom recommended a Crane cam with a GM P/N 12353918 with the following specs;
Duration at .050 lift 214, exh 224
lobe cl 112
lift int .442, lift exh .465
Kit $136.75

At any rate, I just received a new Summit catalogue in the mail, and I looked for that cam with a Crane part number. It was not in the catalogue. I'll assume that either Crane makes it just for GM, or it just didn't happen to be in this catalogue.

However, Summit has their own kit (Cam and lifters) P/N SUM-K1103 with the EXACT specs mentioned above for $71.95.

Don't get me wrong, I am not worrying about $65 when it comes to equipment inside my engine, but I am wondering if the Summit kit would do? Aside from "You get what you pay for", is there anyone who can tell me if this kit is any good or not?

By the way, I have NEVER purchased speed parts from a catalogue before!

As usual, thanks for your help,
Bo

 

[JohnZ]

There's more to comparing two cams than lift, duration, and LSA numbers; the lobe profiles can be very different and have the same "numbers". I'd recommend the GM/Crane cam kit - the GM 300hp cam was an outstanding piece, with excellent low-end torque and torque bandwidth for the street. Crane makes all of GM's internally discontinued and GM Performance Parts cams.

 

[vigman]

Bo

Look at My mystery 327 post( in the C-3 section) I found the cam specs for my melling. It's a clone of the 327/350 HP cam.


FYI


Mike

 

[JHL]

I wouldn`t worry about buying from any of the big catalog mail order companies. I buy just about everything that way and so long as you stick to the big guy`s you shouldn`t have any problems.

In the past I have used Summit and Jeggs, Summit were a bit slow mainly because the parts I required were out of stock and it took a couple of weeks for them to let me know about the problem but Jeggs were excellent, ordered parts and they were on my desk in 3 days, I`m in England !!!

The cost issue on the companies "own brand" is another subject alltogether, but one thing I always thinks about is that if you buy branded products you may well be paying extra just for the name but usually this will include a bit of backup from the manufacturer via their tech lines and so on, probably some expensive packaging as well. To some people they just want the sticker to say the have it, others are quite happy just to get the car going and will use anything. Summit and the likes have a bit of a reputation to maintain so I doubt if their own brand products will be to bad.

Your Choice

J.

 

[Tom Bryant]

I have no idea who grinds Summit's cams for them. I seriously doubt that GM and Crane would spend all that money on R & D and then grind the exact profile to be sold as an economy priced cam through a mail order supplier. As JohnZ said there is a lot more to a cam than basic numbers.

All of the Goodwrench Performance Cams manufactured by Crane are exclusive to GM. Countless hours mave been spent designing the precise assemetrical cam lobe profiles to increase area under the curve. This incorporates faster ramp rates to quickly open and close the valves for the purpose of better cylinder filling and higher cylinder pressures. All the while keeping the duration and overlap figures to a point that is very streetable with A/T and vacuum power accessories. On lower compression ratio engines this makes an engine think that it has higher compression.

Many of the economy priced cams are basically copies of the popular brand name performance grinds in raw specs only. I'm sure that the Summit cam is a good product and will perform well but I doubt that it will be a match to the GM/Crane design. Only a dial indicator will tell the whole story. A while back (can't remember the issue) Hot Rod did a small block story where they removed a Summit cam and replaced it with a Comp Cams grind. Of course there was more to the story than just the cam change. The jist was that the economy cams are great for basic budget rebuilds but for a serious engine you need the highest technology available for the type of cam you are using.

I still stand behind my recommendation for GM P/N 12353918 as a good performance upgrade on the 327/300 engine.

Tom