HOW TO PICK: THE RIGHT JUNKYARD 6.0L LS CAM. 4 CAMS-WHAT WORKS BEST?

you've got a 6-litre and like everyone else you want to know what cam do I use so if I run a test with the stock cam and one other cam I might help a few people rather than that I ran for cams from mild to wild that way I help everybody for this test I took a 6 liter ly6 for those of you not familiar with that is a Gen 4 6 liter with variable cam timing and rectangular port heads you know like the ls3 don't worry you guys have Cathedral port heads all of the results from this cam test carry right over to your combination that's right all of these how these cam shafts work exactly the same even with Cathedral Port hits so how do I know that well I've done that test at rec port Cathedral port head and cam thing like a thousand times and it always does exactly the same thing so rest assured these cans will work the same way on your motor as they did on this ly6 so we've gotten ly6 with rec port heads on it and what we did was run four different camps we started with a factory lq4 cam then I ran a factory ls3 cam then I ran the ever-popular sloppy stage 2 cam then I ran something slightly bigger about at the limit of the available piston the valve clearance on this combination so we ran a comp 54 - for 69 - 11 cam so it's like a 231 degree duration at 50 on the intake side which again about the limit of what you can do with the available piston to valve clearance without a piston that has extra valve relief on like an aftermarket one so mild a little bit Wilder a little bit wilder and then all the way wow this will show you what these cans are capable of and not just these four cams but basically every cam that shares these kinds of lift and duration numbers and LSA obviously so if you get those from a different source and they're about this they're gonna do about that let's find out how these cams did take a look at the results let's get things started with the camp swaps on our ly6 again this is a 6-litre 2008 ly6 originally have DVT cam it but because we run the Holley HP management system which is an aftermarket deal and not the factory ECU we can't control variable cam timing which I think in my opinion is a great idea because when you can vary the cam you can advance it and it if you advance it you pick up power down low you pick a power at the top now it's not gonna fundamentally change the lift and duration of the camshaft but it can really improve the power curve it can broaden it basically add more power at both ends of the spectrum which is kind of cool but unfortunately for our tests we had to replace the VV t cam timing and to establish our baseline what we did was put a factory lq floor cam in this thing in the six liter which it was originally in a six litre anyway albeit one with 317 heads instead of these reports style ls3 hits so what we have is a six liter with rec port heads we also put a factory ls3 intake manifold on here and we'll show you I'll show you when we put the ls3 camshaft in here I'll show you a comparison between the factory ly6 truck manifold and the ls3 car manifold and as you'll see there's really no difference a lot of people think that the truck manifold was designed for lots and lots of torque and that the that the high-performance ls3 manifold was designed for high performance like high top-end stuff that's not the case they're almost exactly the same they just look different so this is our six liter ly6 with the factory lq4 camshaft in it and has long tube headers an open throttle body a missouri electric water pump and we've tuned it with a high so it's basically optimizing this combination so quick with that camshaft our six liter priest four hundred and forty three horsepower and 467 foot-pounds of torque kind of typical mild cam produces more torque than it does horsepower so let's take a look and see what happened when we installed our first camshaft which is a factory ls3 Kim so this is the factory ls3 cam and as we can see compared to the lq4 truck cam it lost power down low anything below 4500 the ls3 cam actually lost power lost torque down there but picked up power out at the top and now at the very top out at 6,500 we're talking about 45 or 50 horsepower more so it's quite a bit out there that's assuming that you're revving your motor all the time out to 6,500 the interesting thing is the two made almost identical torque numbers with the ls3 cam we made 469 foot-pounds so you know we're talking splitting hairs there 1 Z 2 Z's it just shifted the torque curve out a little bit so again a lost power down low picked up power up the top which is kind of what we see from these performance cams compared to the factory so we see the same thing when we compare stuff on the 5.3 liter if we have the factory lm7 cam and then we run any of the stock cams and if you haven't taken a look at that test I compared all the factory cams on a 5-3 compared to that stock truck cam so if you haven't take a look at that take a look at videos right here but this is our comparison on the factory ls3 versus the lq4 there's a trade-off isn't that always the case so now let's take a look and see what happened when we install that fancy sloppy stage 2 cam on our 6 liter so these are the results of our ls3 cambers is the stock cam but remember I told you that I would show you the difference between the ls3 intake and the ly6 intake now everybody thinks the ly6 intake because of your use on a truck application is a lone runner or design or make torque and that the ls3 is designed to make you know top end power because it was used in a Corvette and a Camaro the reality is that the two intake manifolds are actually interchangeable as a matter of fact they're all but identical so here's the comparison between the two intake manifold ZL factory ls3 car manifold and the ly6 truck manful as you can see there's really no difference I mean if I were just to show you those two curves and you would think that they're just back-to-back runs basically so that's a difference or so future reference ly6 ls3 it's all but interchangeable so now let's get to our but everybody's been waiting for if this is the sloppy stage - can this particular one was sold by Trick Flow but it's also you know was originally sold by Elgin and it's made for a lot of different people so lots of different people sell it here's what happened when we installed that cam and look at that that's actually a really nice Power Core that's a really nice gain and no wonder the cam is so popular it's inexpensive and I mean look at the game so what I like on this cam is that not only did it make you know more power than either one of the other two cams peak powers up to 540 horsepower peak torque was also up to 493 foot-pounds but it didn't lose power anywhere even compared to the very mild truck cam even down low it's not gaining a whole bunch down there in the 3000 4000 range but I like the fact that it's not losing anything because that's usually the trade-off that we associate with a cam swap if you go from some kind of stock thing to something that's better than the stopping oftentimes like we saw with the ls3 you gain a lot more peak power that's really easy to do with a can swap on an LS because they're just begging for cam timing but a lot of times you see this kind of thing there's a trade-off and low speed power like with the ls3 and you see that a lot if the guy puts an ALICE 910 then it's even worse it makes a lot of people but it trades off a lot down low now the sloppy cam didn't do that it just basically picked up power everywhere which is good now it tended to fall off on the six liter tended to fall off a little bit at the top admittedly read this thing out to 67 or 68 hundred but it's doing well and I like the fact that again it didn't like trade power down low so it looks like if you were to put this in which means tit which it tells me that we tested this on six later but even if we were to run this on a smaller motor it looks good for that cam because we've run a lot of different cam shafts on the five three and if you haven't taken a look at that a cam swap that I did comparing all the factory cams you need to take a look at that but I think that this sloppy cam would work well and Matt the guys over sloppy have used it for a lot of things they'd use it on four eights and five threes and lots of turbo stuff and I can see why it's working so well it's a good combination it's got a lot of average power which is exactly what you want from a cannon now let's find out what happens when we install that bigger comp cam now we're gonna take a look at our final test of our six liter ly6 we've got our factory lq4 and the ls3 and our sloppy stage - the things are getting a little busy so what I think I'm gonna do is get rid of the ls3 camshaft not because not a lot of people care about the ls3 I'm throwing shade on the L Street that's not right well let's get rid of that give us a little bit more room to take a look at the other cam so we've got our sloppy stage - versus the factory lq4 cam now let's take a look and see what happened when we install the biggest of our cams that comp 54 - 469 - 11 and that's a wreck port can we sell it on Rick for heads and we know it's gonna work really well right so here are the power gains with that camshaft and as you can see compared to sloppy came out here at the end you know is worth 498 - 541 so 43 horsepower but it came with the trade off anyway let's take a look first at the peak power is 543 horsepower if we compare that to the factory lq4 cam which also made 443 or 443 horsepower that's a difference of a hundred horsepower measured peak to peak so that's a pretty big gain from a camshaft on a six liter it did really well but let's look at the whole picture here so compared to the factory LP for camp the comp cam lost power starting you know below 4000 rpm so the softer down there compared to the sake stage - it was softer from 5000 on down and then started gaining power out at the top so if you were to read this thing even farther you'd pick up more power compared to either one of the cams but it would be softer down low and especially down in the 2500 to 3000 range so you probably would need more converter with this cam than you would with either of the other two and because this was on a 6 liter if you tested it on a 5 3 or heaven forbid a 4:8 and you'd see an even bigger trade-off here the trade-off would be would be shifted farther out so this cam would be less appropriate on these smaller motors than it is on these bigger motors and that's kind of typical of cam timing so this is about as big a cam as you'd want to put in a factory 6 liter with the factory available piston to valve nerves you may be able to squeak a little bit more in but this is a good sized cam for that factory available piston valve clearance on any of the 6 liter stuff for the v 3 this is about as big as you would go so we've shown you a stock cam and I'll bring up this ls3 to just confuse us even more so we can see it also we got you know small big bigger biggest this just kind of shows us what's going on and maybe if I get rid of torque here you can kind of see that a little bit better so that way we can just see the power curves of the floor again this shows and anywhere in between if you slot another cam and it's going to be in between there so this should give you a pretty good idea this is kind of what cams do really small cams do with the faculty ones and the next size up is the ls3 and that sloppy stage 2 cam does very well and then if you want to go even bigger like that comp cam it does that this is what they do regardless of where they're thrown this should give you a pretty good idea what you want to do what damn you want to pick for your 6-litre ok guys what did you think about cam tests on our 6 liter did help it hurt was it confusing here's what I want you to take away from this not exactly what these cams did I mean I honestly don't care what the lq4 cam does at the ls3 or the sloppy stage - or even this comp camp what I want you to look at these is as a general guideline because you're how many guys are gonna buy these exact cams what I want you to know is it if you get a cam that's as wild as the comp cam that has similar specs it's gonna do that or if it's in the middle and it's like the sloppy stage - its 227 or 228° Adoration and 50 on the intake side it's gonna kind of do that same with the ls3 and same with the factory cam no matter who makes it whatever the specs are you can look at especially the most important thing for me is that intake duration number so if it's between the 228 of the sloppy cam and the factory ls3 cam chances are the power curve is going to be in between those two and the same thing if it's if it's like that comp cam it's gonna be up there but it also know that if it's up there just making peak power it's more than likely if it's that big it's gonna trade stuff down low same thing with the very mild cams like in lq4 if you put a small truck cam in there it's gonna be better than that it's gonna kind of be in between there maybe a little bit better than the ls3 if you put an LS 9 cam in it's gonna be a little bit better than the ls3 on the top but but drop power down low all of this I did all this to use as a guideline so now these guys should be able to figure out whatever cam you select you should look at an intake duration number slot it in where you think it goes that should give you a pretty good idea thanks for watching guys I'm Richard holding there make sure to LIKE share subscribe ring the bell help me out with my channel and I'll keep making the videos

Channel: Richard Holdener

Views: 334,715

Keywords: LS, CHEAP, JUNKYARD, CAM, 6.0l, LY6, LQ4, CAM SWAP, VVT, HOLLEY, RICHARD HOLDENER, WHAT IS THE BEST LS CAM, JUNKYARD 6.0L CAMS, DOES THE SLOPPY STAGE 2 REALLY WORK, LS CAM SWAPS

Id: Xspfk2zxSrs

Length: 14min 5sec (845 seconds)

Published: Wed Mar 11 2020