Cam Specs

[cadiblaster]

Howdy All - for any history junkies out there, or those that might have manuals gathering dust, here is a chance to blow the dust off... This has been an issue that has had me puzzled for many years but never had the opportunity to really dig in and investigate.

Had a (15 year old) '80 Eldo that shot a con-rod through the water jacket. What a shame! Got a new motor out of an '81 Eldo that looked like it was creamed on the passenger side by a cement truck! Other than that the car was spotless! Appeared to only have 30k on it. It had that wonderful 4-6-8 "economy system" on it. Pulled all that stuff off, dropped the very spotless engine in the '80 and took off running.

(A rather remarkable aside; my buddy and I did the engine swap in EXACTLY 24 hours flat, from first bolt to last bolt!!!! (Minus the trip to the wrecking yard) Boy were we tired!)

The funny thing was, the new motor never idled right. It was a very slight, but rough idle. Almost like a miss. It definately was not a miss, the Sun Analyzer showed good strong spark on all cylinders all the time. At RPMs, you wouldn't know there was a problem, it ran wonderful, even giving some of those stupid Japanese burners a run for their money!

We tried swapping everything. We learned the standard engine and the 4-6-8 had different intakes, so we swapped the right one on (for the non 4-6-8 engine). Checked and adjusted timing forward and back, checked vacuum, changed ECMs, fuel pressure, injectors - you name it, we did it! We were at a loss!

The only thing we didn't do was swap/check the cam. The question that has been burning in the back of my mind is:

Is there a difference between an '80 and '81 cam (where the '81 came from a 368 WITH the 4-6-8 system)???

If they are indeed the same, the only conclusion I can come to is that the cam was flat on a cylinder or two, possibly from the wreck...