George brought his fun AE86 missle car to us yesterday and wanted to fine tune his cam gears. While most people think these small changes are meaningless and a waste of time – look how much power we gained on a VERY mild setup just by fine tuning the cam gears and then playing with the ignition timing.
Believe it or not, we actually REDUCED base ignition timing at the distributor to make more peak power! The engine gained nearly 12whp at redline, and 8whp from peak to peak. With an engine that makes 100whp, you can figure out how those numbers work out to percentage gains pretty easily. The interesting thing about cam timing is that it will change for each different setup. A different header, intake or cam will most certainly change the ideal valve event timing.
She doesn’t look like much, but these engines were in Formula Atlantic racecars cars for many years making over 200hp – they are impressive little engines.