98 deville

[Lynette B. Rivera]

Hello! As you probably know, my car has a northstar, its over heating & so I went to northstar performance and bought their stud kit, now I'm looking for some nice gaskets.. I was thinkin of also throwing the intake cam from the eldo onto mine.....has anyone done this before/ have any insite on what kinda gaskets I should get & where to get um.....I don't want the feel pro ones tho... cuz I wanted the copper & rubber ones I'm juat having a hard time locating um..

[KHE]

Was any diagnosis performed on the car that pointed to the headgaskets or did you assume that just because the car is overheating, it must be the headgaskets? Is the purge line flowing coolant at idle? When does it overheat? Are the cooling fans operating?

Putting the intake cams from an eldorado would create more issues - the transmission final drive ratio will not be correct and the car will throw all sorts of codes as well as have driveability issues. This is assuming you are using VIN 9 cams (from a 300 HP engine) Don't do it... If you're swapping intake cams from a 275 HP Eldorado, they are the same as what is on the car.

If the head gaskets are blown, use the GM headgaskets or Felpro. Anything else and you are doing the validation. As much work as headgaskets are, I would not want to do it again...

[Cadillac Jim]

New cams are about $300 apiece from the discount GM online parts dealers. It doesn't stop there, though, since you will want new lifters for each new cam.

I'm not as certain as KHE that the VIN 9 cams will cause major difficulties in a VIN 9 car. The final drive ratio is 3.11 in a VIN Y car and 3.71 in a VIN 9 car, but the torque rating of the motors is 295 lb-ft for the VIN 9 engine vs. 300 lb-ft for the VIN Y engine. You may or may not notice less throttle response in nearly all driving with the VIN 9 cams and a VIN Y final drive ratio but you will have a surge at the top end of the RPM range that you will not get with the VIN Y intake cams. I think the thrust of your question is whether there is anyone here who has tried it, and what do they report; I would be interested in seeing that myself.

It would seem to me that recovering the 5 lb-ft of torque can be easly done by good tuning, keeping a clean intake and AC/Delco air cleaner element, a 49-state OBD low-restriction cat, and Borla Super Turbo mufflers, so a VIN 9 cam in a VIN Y car would seem to be a way to get VIN 9 performance with VIN Y gas mileage. But I don't know because I haven't tried it, and don't know of anyone that has, and tells people about it.

I don't know if the differences in the intake cams will cause problems with the PCM. The final drive ratio is hard-coded into the PCM so that you *cannot* change the final drive ratio without getting a hard P0730 code that will *not* go away and AFAIK can't be programmed with a Tech II. You will get a "Service transmission" message and a warning light from a P0730 but the MIL won't come on, so you may be able to get emissions inspection, but some states/facilities will not allow any Pnnnn codes to pass emissions inspection.

If this is your daily driver and you aren't prepared to replace both intake cams again, I wouldn't change the intake cams unless I could drive another car that had the same change and you were certain that it worked out, with no OBD codes, good driveability, etc. Everything that KHE says might happen, surely can happen. Myself, I avoid experimenting with my daily driver. A second car or a project car, with money to risk, well, sure. But not my daily driver.