304 CAM - Crow 4502 OR 4001 (same as crane 268)

[EYY]

So I'm looking at buying a cam for my 304 shortly and have narrowed it down to two cams. It's between the crow 4502 and the crow 4001.

The car will be used for 80% highway driving and 20% city driving. I want to retain the standard idle, and the engine will likely remain standard with the exception of the exhaust and tune.

I'm basically wanting to know if anybody here has any personal experience with either cam. I've done loads of research and been on the phone to crow cams, and they seem to be pushing for the 4502, but I'm concerned that it may be a little too big for daily driving and decent fuel economy. However, crow said that it should actually return BETTER fuel economy than the standard cam which I find a little hard to comprehend.

See here for the crow cams catalogue http://www.crowcams.com.au/Portals/0/Catalogue-June-2014/Holden-304-355-v8-vn-style-heads.pdf

4001
Valve Timing: IN. 18/62 EX. 62/18 LCA-112
206/206 duration @.050”
Valve Lift: .463”/.463”

4502
Valve Timing: IN. 30/72 EX. 73/23 LCA-113
218/214 Duration @.050”
Valve Lift: .486"/.486"

Cheers!

 

[dobesz]

They are quite small cams what are u wanting to achieve with the cam swap?

 

[EYY]

Well I'm doing an engine swap shortly, so while the engine's out I thought I might as well replace a few gaskets and fit a small cam while I have it apart.

I just want to replace the cam because I'm sure the old one's seen better days, being 18+ years old (and not the original engine from the car so not sure how many KM it's done). It doesn't necessarily need to give a massive performance increase, but would be nice to kill two birds with one stone.

 

[gtrboyy]

Only experience I've had with cams that small was driving a couple sv5000's & also vn group a....definately would want something touch bigger or atleast more compression like head skim or thinner headgaskets to go with usual hsv mods.

Low c.r really kills these things nearly as much as factory baby cam.Mildly modded can really wake them up & still be docile enough to be daily driver with correct mods.

 

[wraith]

I had a 4502 in the clubby. Didn't need to touch anything and had a big effect all through out the power curve which surprised a lot of people because it was a baby cam. Went even better after a manifold swap. There's a massive cam thread some where around here.

 

[delcowizzid]

the 4502 is much like what i just tuned with long tube headers and exhaust with bowl cleanup and head shave went 240rwhp

 

[vr304]

I had a slightly bigger cam than that 4502 in my old 5 litre which was internally stock and it ran fine for a road cruiser had good power and fuel economy was only marginally worse than the stock cam

 

[EYY]

I had a 4502 in the clubby. Didn't need to touch anything and had a big effect all through out the power curve which surprised a lot of people because it was a baby cam. Went even better after a manifold swap. There's a massive cam thread some where around here.

Thanks wraith that's exactly what I wanted to know. Did the idle still sound stock? I don't really want the cam to be noticeable in the idle.

the 4502 is much like what i just tuned with long tube headers and exhaust with bowl cleanup and head shave went 240rwhp

Gee that's a fair effort with the banana manifold! I'll be using the hsv tube type headers, are they what you're talking about? Certainly leaning towards the 4502 now.

 

[wraith]

It had a little bit of lope but nothing to extreme.

 

[dobesz]

Its pretty much an sv5000 cam, would you need a tune with it?