Hello everyone!

Today i'm discussing my 1993 F350, The Stay Puft Marshmallow truck, and the fact it decided to spring a head gasket leak. I had the engine out about 50k ago for a bottom end regasket and inspection, but never pulled the heads off for some reason.

Anyway, so i'm gonna pluck the engine and put it on the stand again for this round, its an F4TE block 351W, that has been factory drilled and tapped for the roller lifter spider setup. I also have a few spare sets of spiders and dogbones, and a set of new roller lifters on hand. I also have on hand a set of E7 heads that were rebuilt, had some minor porting done to the exhaust side ( i think the thermoactor bumps are taken off) and has a set of stiffer springs already installed.

The truck is a manual transmission, 4.10 geared truck, it spends most of it's life towing stuff. I was looking for a suggestion for a good roller cam that would provide me a bit more low end torque without causing all sorts of issues with the factory speed density setup.

Thanks in advance!
Lee

 

here is a comp cam i had in mind... Comp 35-413-8

 

The factory F4TE roller cam is actually a decent cam and won't cause any issues with the SD setup.

 

i was really hoping for a bit more low end torque. i have a factory F4TE cam right now, i was just hoping for a bit more.

 

You could open up the exhaust (headers & true duals) and intake (open element filter) and bump the base timing up a couple of degrees and have a noticeable increase in low end power. You could go a little further and install 1.7 ratio rocker arms. If it got a little lean under heavy throttle conditions and those upgrades, you could install an adjustable fuel pressure regulator.

 

The F4 cam specs are just a step below the HO cam in the 5.0. Add 1.7 full roller rockers and this is what they look like: .445/.473 lift, 256/266 advertised duration, 116 LSA. Smooth powerband from idle to 5 grand with those ported heads.

 

A while ago I tried to use Comp Cam's CamQuest software to predict how much power my combination would make. The software was full of bugs that required restarting many times, and you're never sure just how close it will be too reality. But I played some games with it to see how configuration changes would affect output. One of the biggest gains it predicted was switching to a free flowing exhaust system. That, and switching to 1.7 rockers, may be the easiest and cheapest changes to make for the gains that can be had.

Of course if you really want to do all the work to replace the cam, that can result in big gains as well. Just remember that most hotter cams move the power upward, which is not what you're looking for, so that may be the limit to how much low end torque you can achieve.

 

Thanks for all the input. I should mention that the engine has already had the usual bolt on stuff, i put a set of 1.7 roller tip rockers on before, it has headers with a true dual exhaust, no cats, and a few other minor things. it has served me great, i was pulling the engine anyway, and was looking just for a cam that i could slide in and not have to dig into the computer again.

I decided that since i already have it, and no one has given me a definitive "run this cam, its the cat's meow" , i'm going to run the Ford F4ZE-EA cam.

hoping it gets me a bit of a gain.

once again, thanks for all the input!

 

I'm thinking the F4ZE cam is an HO cam. Not sure how your SD setup will like all the changes along with that cam. But worth a try

 

Many of the GEN 1 Lightning owners, that did roller cam conversions, used a 5.0 Mustang roller cam and advanced it 2 degrees. I don't remember any of them having any idle/running issues with that setup alone.

 

You know, speaking of advance, you could try advancing the dizzy a couple degrees, maybe 3 or 4 if you want to run 89 or higher octane, will boost torque a bit.

 

How big? If that is all 3" there is your problem.

 

I’ll dig up this thread. How did the roller cam with the SD system work out? I have a 93 SD truck with a tired 5.8 and don’t want to dig into wiring and electronics.

 

I ended up moving to a big block swap, so i cant comment on how it worked.