7AFE camshaft grind Options

[GriffGirl]

Looking into getting my cams ground, keeping stock internals for the time being. Two questions: if I have my cams ground, do I need to re-shim the valves or any of that sort of stuff, or is this basically a "drop in"? I'm looking for more of an overall performance grind, with the intention of turboing the 7A in the hopefully not too distant future. So how much should I have ground? I know webcams has a numbered grind system, but I'm looking at having them done locally, and it'd be nice to sound at least a *little* bit like I know what I'm talking about.

[hurley97]

I'm pretty sure I have a spare set of cams in the basement if you want them, that will reduce down time while you have them re-ground. Mine are from Web Cams, they don't specifically make a set for the 7A so you have to have them custom made. I had them custom ground based on the fact that I was going to turbo the motor in the near future. I did drive the car with the motor stock and just the cams for like 13k miles. They basically didn't do very much on the low end (since the addition of a turbo would increase low end power) but it held out the power all the way to redline as opposed to dropping off in the mid rpm range.

All the following info is from my engine rebuild thread when I installed the cams, hope it helps a little...

what is ur cam spec?

someone asked about re-shimming the valves so I took some pics before the valve cover went on today.

first you hand tighten the cams in (no need to torque them at this point) and turn it to top dead center. starting with one side first and using a feeler gauge...


do only the valves where the lobes are facing up. pull out the min and max sizes on the feeler gauge.
the minimum should fit between the shim and the cam lobe...


and the maximum should not fit all the way under the lobe at all...

[Johnnyny]

those look good