Griff 500 Worn Cam - 885 or Stealth Replacement?

[beancaker]

Which would you go for? No track days, smooth idle, no shunting and I drive like a vicar.
885 and Stealth kits are very similar cost, want to keep the car as original as possible.

Thanks in advance for your opinions.

[TheRainMaker]

I have a 885, no shunting and its nice and smooth.

Mine was set up on a rolling road after fitting though.

[Dominic TVRetto]

If you wanted to keep it OE/original as possible, I would have thought the TVR885 cam would be the one - as it is the nearest to "TVR OE" as you will get (being the standard Power replacement) and bears the TVR name.

The cam itself is very versatile, being just a shade different to the Stealth, although with the right set-up it can perform like a wilder cam - with highly ported/flowed heads and TVR885 (plus the associated upgrades) I have peak torque at 4900rpm.

HTH,


Dom

[carsy]

Have a word with TVR Beaver, he's had both.

Lets just say he settled on the 885.

[ClassiChimi]

885 in my 450 and I'm very happy with it.
Great every day cam yet with the right other tweaks it can be fairly leary
Catted exhaust and still produced
300bhp and 350 ft lb torque after being put on Dom's Rolling road.

[Toma500]

I have an 885 in mine but also have an MBE ecu installed at the same time as the cam so no proper comparison as its night and day better now no shunting ,lovely flat torque curve very easy to drive fast without effort or revving the nuts off the motor

[ClassiChimi]

Very nice Tomma, mines on the Mbe and has a very similar power curve, slightly less than yours as its a 450 but the lines are almost the same, Jay's very good at his job.




Figures taken at the wheels so if you add anything from around 15/20% to get back to flywheel figures mines anything from about 290 -300 bhp

[Matthew Poxon]

885 here as well, very pleased with it. Here is a comparison between the standard TVR435 cam and the TVR885 on my Griff...



As you can see you get a bit more of everything but still very nice to drive around town with no shunting.

[ClassiChimi]

Since having yours done Matthew can you feel the difference in the power or is it quite subtle, the reason I ask is because I had mine replaced as part of an engine re fresh so never had before or after Dyno figures, looking at your graph and going by memory of my car before the 885 that seems to confirm the subtle difference I felt, not some huge gain but just slightly better through the Rev range and stronger at the top end,,
My immediate thoughts were it made hardly any difference but after a trackday i soon realised it did

As much as extra power I just like the way the engine runs on it, smooth.

[Matthew Poxon]

ClassiChimi said:

Since having yours done Matthew can you feel the difference in the power or is it quite subtle, the reason I ask is because I had mine replaced as part of an engine re fresh so never had before or after Dyno figures, looking at your graph and going by memory of my car before the 885 that seems to confirm the subtle difference I felt, not some huge gain but just slightly better through the Rev range and stronger at the top end,,
My immediate thoughts were it made hardly any difference but after a trackday i soon realised it did

As much as extra power I just like the way the engine runs on it, smooth.

You are pretty much spot on there.

It is a little bit embarrassing to be honest but I took the car up to Jason and Dom at TVR power after having the cam fitted as I was convinced that it had less power than it had before with the original cam. The car did not 'feel' as quick as before for some reason.

Put it on the dyno and it had gone from 242BHP to 275BHP, so a massive difference at the wheels and even more at the fly. Great result but I felt like a right knobhead claiming it felt slower when in fact it had gained a heathy amount of power. I had a chat with Jason about it and he said the old cam was a bit lumpy where is was worn so the car would have given the impression is was a bit of beast where really is wasn't running right whereas the new cam is so silky smooth and refined it feels a bit normal compared to before.

You are right though, once I got it on a track and exercised it properly you can tell it has much more oomph that before.

You can actually see the lumpiness of the old cam in he dyno chart:
TVR435


New cam, nice and smooth and AFR is better too, and without a remap.
TVR885

[ClassiChimi]

I've never seen one like that before but then I've not seen many anyway,

Those dips,, blooming heck, I often feel a bit of a knob so don't worry about it,,,

Thinking about it the only other one I've seen like that is on the Mazda race cars,, my mate tries everything, he's like me, a decent enough driver but not exactly an engineer,,, I'm doing some work for him tomorrow so I'll see if I can get one of his graphs,,

So with some knowledge these graphs tell you a lot about what's going on inside,,

It's a lovely strong engine you have and if you think about it, where your graph rises quite sharply compared to mine is also where you gained on me when on track, yours as with Qbee's 5.0 also jumps ahead half a yard when we apply the throttle as the power output shows,,
I'm starting to be able to correlate the figures with how they run now I look, Chilli's is rather impressive too.

One thing I felt when we were having such respectful fun, mine seems to be very smooth at the top end so even though the powers lower it Seemed to hang on OK, the 5.0 tends to vibrate more up there so that's maybe why!

Swings and roundabouts, what can't be denied is the sound of yours,, I kept looking underneath at your exhausts,, trying to work out why when behind you I really enjoyed hearing it and it's moments like that that I feel blessed when out with other Tvr's.