dilema - cams

[JCB]

heres my dilema - my track car engine is totally fooked. big bang and lots of smoke at croft last week. i finally got the head off and oh my word what a bloody mess. looks like a small car bomb has gone off in my engine bay. i think a piston has cracked or conrod bearing failed but basically there is a large hole in the liner of numer 2 pot, the piston and valves as just a few lumps of shrapnel, various bits of engine have got sucked up through the inlet manifold and back into other chambers. and the head is fooked !!! (this was a new casting only 1 month ago )

anyway - the old engine is fitted with a schrick cam. not sure which but guess its a 288. the "new" engine is a stock 325. i am a bit reluctant to remove the head to put this cam in as i think splitting the head from the block might lead me to problems in the future (having had one head split on me i dont want to tempt fate). the new engine is a low mileage (c 30k) unit bought from another zoner and was a rebuild by a main dealer in 1998 (the block is stamped with "96".

so what do i do - accept less power and learn to drive on a track better
thus compensating for the drop in power with faster driving or take a risk and put the cam in. the old engine was in the region of 190bhp. only other mods were cone filter with cold air feed and chipped.

your opinions would be greatly appreciated...thanks.

[Jhonno]

shouldnt be any risk in swapping the head, the last engine went due to bottom end failure

swap the cam

[JCB]

the last head cracked a couple of months ago hence the new head. the guy who does all my work for me reckons its better to leave the engine as it is and not to tempt fate. he is a good bloke, BMW specialist ex main dealer mechanic who set up a business 12 years ago and is doing more work than the dealer now 1!! i trust his opinion but also want to find out what others think. thanks for your advice !

[JCB]

how much BHP gain would i get from a schrick 288 ??

[Jhonno]

prob quite a bit with the chip etc

the standard cam is very tame

[Taffy]

Fit the cam Jonathan, standard cams on track will be quite bad and you'll only end up swapping it back in at a later date out of frustration! We had a 304 Schrick cam on a standard head, standard bottom end, standard valves and all was fine

[M3GTR]

...and the M20 head cracks for fun, so don't assume that it was anything to do with the cam. Did any of the rockers break aswell?

Put the cam in and don't over rev it! .... my last engine blow up was due to buzzin the engine on a down change by accident. Head cracked, rockers broke etc etc. The same cam is now in a new engine and I've had no reliability problems after fitting a soft cut rev limiter.

[JCB]

what did you set the limiter to ?? i am not sure what my limiter was set to as the ECU had been chipped. it was about 6700 i think. whats the difference between a soft cut and hard cut limiter ??

[JCB]

oh and yes - two of the rockers broke. i suspect teh root cuase of the problem was in the bottom end though...it was a real mess in there. i will try and post some pics soon. the annoying thing is that i had just bought a new head (as in a new casting) at great expense to try and overcome the head cracking problem. it looks like the head is damaged beyond repair as a result of the "mishap" .....bugger !

[psychochild187]

ill buy the cam off you if you feel like selling

[JCB]

sorry - transfered the cam across to the replacement engine in the end ...cheers !

[psychochild187]

oh well . hope it all works good .