Typhoon Camkit

[neal1980]

Thinking of one of these for my 3.9, has anyone fitted one?? any comments??

Im looking at the ones on ebay with rhodes lifters, double valve springs, timing gear, etc for £320.00

Will be used for fast road only.

Cheers

[tahiti450]

The Rhodes lifters are very nice but I would have thought a bit of an indulgence (depending on the price of course) unles you are building a screamer (in which case you'd need fancy pistons at least). Out of interest what are the specs of the Typhoon? duration, lift, overlap etc.
I am sure there are a few people here who will share their experiences ( I am not one of them, but am just about to fit a Stealth into my moderately modified 4.6).

[blitzracing]

The choise of cam depends on how much work you want to do apart from change the actual cam. The Typhoon cam needs the valve springs changing to stop them becomming coil bound on full lift and there is also a risk that there is insufficient clearance between the spring cap and valve guide, which means heads off and shorter valve guides fitted that pushes the cost up. The rhoads can be very noisy before they fully pump up, and realistically the standard new land rover lifters are good for 6500 rpm, which is quite enough for a 40 year old design push rod engine. The piper cams offered by RPI like the 270/2 ( approx 24 bhp extra)and 285 bolt straight in (approx 30bhp extra)as they have less lift so springs and guides are not a problem, although ultimately produce a couple of horsepower less than higher lift cams. The names piper use for their cams is not acurate as the 285 is actually a 276'duration (much the same as the typhoon cam) and the 270/2 is a 272' duration . RPI strongly only recommended a 270/2 for a std 3.9 RV8. Longer duration cams really need fully ported heads / big valves to make the most of them and you start to loose low end torque. If its V8 tuner you have seen, I was about to buy a typhoon when he told me he had no more available, but something better but more expensive was on the way. I dont know what the alternative cam was however, so Ive ended up with the piper 270/2. From what I have read the Typhoon is OK for road use as long as its a light vehicle and slight loss of torque is not an issue. Cost wise you wont see much change out of £400-500 with all the gaskets if you do the job properly who ever you go for. Im matching the head and inlet manifolds to the gaskets as the standard castings are appalling where they meet, and the areas around the valve seats are pretty rough as well. Lowering the inlet trumpets by 15-20mm also helps the breathing.

Cam specs are:

Max lift with std springs is .464"

Standard RV8 285" .39" 500-5400 rpm
Hurricane 262' .433" 1000-6000rpm Better than standard RV8, but a bit "soft"
Typhoon 276 .48" 1200-6200 rpm Needs valve spings and possibly guides
Piper 270/2 272' .42" 1500-6000 rpm Good all rounder
Piper 285 276' .440" 2000-6500 rpm Needs big valves and or gas flowed heads to make the most of it

Kent do a good range for this engine as well but are pretty pricey.

These are quoted specs, but how you quote power range seems a very inexact science !! Ive also yet to find out why a 270' cam out performs the standard 285' used by Rover??? I also dont know what the cam spec TVR use to compare it with (I think they use a Kent cam). I know it revs a lot higher than the Rover cam, but losses a lot of low end torque. Ive used both piper 270 and 285 cams in other engines and the 270 is a peach, lots of revs and no loss of torque. The 285 needs to be rev'd pretty hard.

Hope this helps

Mark

[brummiewedge]

I have a typhoon cam in mine, the meat of the power is from 2-5K, std lifters and 300ish bhp.No point in reving to 6 really so Rhodes lifters a waste of lolly. Also the rhodes lifters are meant to sound like a Skeleton copulating in a Twiglet tin, could you put up with that!?

[boosted Ls1]

brummiewedge said:

I have a typhoon cam in mine, the meat of the power is from 2-5K, std lifters and 300ish bhp.No point in reving to 6 really so Rhodes lifters a waste of lolly. Also the rhodes lifters are meant to sound like a Skeleton copulating in a Twiglet tin, could you put up with that!?

I used the rhodes once and they were very noisey at low revs (made my car sound like a scrapper) but that could have been because I didn't shim them properly. It was a very very long time ago! Nowadays I'd prefer to get the cam grind right and use crane lifters.

Boosted.