Howdy!
I finished installing my new Zex cam a few days ago. My y8 AEM cam gear had to be adjusted -5* degrees to line up with a z6 AEM cam gear. Why didn't I use the z6 gear you ask? Because the y8 gear has 6 bolts while the z6 gear is the old style and has 3. I don't want the gear to slip.
I adjusted the valve lash on the loose side (.009/.011") just to see how much it would clack. Surprisingly the clack isn't that bad, or as bad as I expected. I had once ran a Delta 272 cam in an all motor d15b2 that I had a long time ago. That cam clacked terribly bad no matter how tight the valve lash was.
The first thing I noticed with the cam is how much louder and deeper the exhaust tone is. With the stock cam I could drive comfortably around with an open header. Now that is not the case. I supposed that extra lift and duration on the exhaust side increased the decibles of my engine's exhaust note. The cam has a little lope to it; a smidge more than a stock y8 stock cam.
Performance wise I saw and felt a difference right away. My AFRs went from 14.2 at an idle to 16.4! My motor likes fuel and ran the smoothest between 13.2 - 14.0 in part and half throttle conditions. With the 59300 cam and in non vtec operation, my engine leaned out to 15 - 15.5 in those areas.
I am going to tune the low rpm maps before I even activate vtec. I went to do some preliminary tuning on Monday but ran into a problem with my Ostrich. Any change I made to the ROM then uploaded to the Ostrich would either make the ECU throw a solid cel or would kill the motor. I hope to have that resolved and I will attempt to tune today.
Once I finish tuning it, it's time for some ripper videos.
After that I plan to tear the car down for the winter. I'm going to strip it to a bare shell to remove all sound deadening material (mainly under the car) and repair all rust. No more of this not making it to the track because I can't pass tech. I am sick of that excuse!
Thanks for reading (if anyone out there still reads this lol)!
