Vet cam??

[wesleyak47]

Hi guys I have a motor that sounds really good but idk what cam is in it. The guy I got it from said it has a vet camshaft in it. Has anyone heard of of vet cams?

[wfojon]

He probably meant Corvette cam. It would be better than a stock cam
Jon

[wesleyak47]

OK cause I'm not sure of the lift it has but it has a very rough idle shakes the truck and hits hard

[geezer#99]

Maybe it's a 'duntov' off road cam!!

[Nick_R_23]

Short of pulling your cam and getting the numbers off it, or physically measuring the lift and duration numbers on the motor, nobody is really going to be able to tell you what you have. Corvette, or "R/V" cams are pretty popular drop in cams for small blocks. It doesn't sound like a healthy motor though, if the idle is that rough and the truck shakes that bad. You might need engine work or a tune up.

[wesleyak47]

As in rough I meant a choppy idle it was dial in and tuned before I got it came out of same truck as mine

[Alex V.]

What are the other parts in the top end? Heads? Carburetor? Compression ratio?

The engine currently in my Suburban, a '78 2-bolt 350 out of a truck, was in a '68-72 Corvette w/Quadrajet and TH400 before I bought it for the 'Burb. It ran okay in the Corvette, with the automatic, but bolting my 4G carburetor and intake (original to the Suburban) on it and sticking it in front of an NP435 made for a very poor driving experience. Lumpy idle, and adequate power up at highway speed (2,600+ RPM with my 3.73's) but trying to get timing and jetting "in tune" was a lost cause and I was unable to keep it from stumbling and bucking when I tipped into it at all below about 2,200 RPM. I found a deal on a take-out GM Goodwrench crate engine cam (which was slightly calmer than even the original 300 horse cam the 'Burb's 327 and the '78 engine would've come with) and upon taking the old cam out, the best I could determine was that it was a 3/4 cam with something like .458" lift on both sides. Whoever put that cam in a low compression engine with 624 smog heads didn't know - or care - at all about how it really ran.

That is to say, just because it's a "Vette" cam doesn't mean much, and my knee-jerk perspective is if this individual is making such a point that it's got a "Vette cam" in it you may have a combination of parts that's hardly ideal and potentially worse than if it were the lowly, but stock, matched combination GM chose to put in the truck.

FYI, someone correct me if I'm wrong, but as an example the "300 horse" profile cam was used in all these 327's in 1967:

210 HP (2 barrel passenger car, 8 or 8.5:1 compression?
220 HP (biggest available 10-30 series truck engine, 4 bbl. square bore Rochester 4 Jet, 1.76 intake valves, 8:1 compression)
275 HP (mid-level performance in passenger car, Quadrajet, something like 10.25:1 compression with 1.94" valve camel hump heads)
300 HP (base Corvette engine - same as 275 horse but different carburetor)

So the cam all our small block trucks came with from the factory could be called a "Vette cam", but it was used in many other substantially different applications with different power characteristics depending on the parts surrounding it.

There are other cams patterned after those that came in Corvettes over the years; "350 horse", etc. The above is just info that may lay a better foundation for understanding the contrast of catchy slang vs. legitimate knowledge and proper engine building.

[wesleyak47]

The truck has great performance despite the 26 Inch rims it has. It has lot of all around power but only thing I know about engine is it is. 30 over and has some kind of big cam In it, I'm not sure what kind of heads but has edlebrock intake headers and a 7
650 holly 4 barrel. I was wondering if anyone heard of that camera so that when I do upgrade something I get something that works with setup

[cadillac_al]

A 350 hp Vette cam will run fine in a stock Chevy engine if that's all you have around. There are better cams now and a lot of people like the HE268 cam which is a little hotter than the 350 hp cam I believe. I think you have Holly problems though. I would try to get a vacuum reading and verify that there are no vacuum leaks.

[77 ChevySport]

FWIW: Taken from the NCRS Discussion Board

Do L46 and L79 use same cam or not?


They do not. The L-79 cam was GM #3863151. The L-46 cam is GM #3896962. The latter was also used for all L-82. The 3896962 is still available from GM, 50 years after it was originally released. In fact, it's still used in some GM crate engines with flat tappet cams. Larry

[blazer2007]

I had the good vette cam in mine,the older 370 hp. I believe and it was quite choppy