Crower Level 3 cam. 276/281, 112. https://www.crower.com/camshafts/buick-350-compu-pro-hydraulic-cam-276-hdp.html
FYI for sake of calculations. Fel Pro blue head gasket has 3.9 bore and compressed thickness of .042 Mr Sony, I don't know your name. If you just want a lumpy idle use the motha thumper or comp cam. Just be prepared to get your ass kicked by every fart pipe equipped Civic you come up against. Not trying to be an ass, just trying help you to be prepared and get what you want. The lower your compression the worse the MT or Comp will run. It will load up, blubber like a baby until about 3000 RPM then the iron manifolds will choke it all out by 5500. Put in a 4000 converter and 4.11 gears woo haa!
Thanks Steve. Correction on Static compression, 9.30 DCR for 268 H----7.71 DCR for 212---7.78 DCR for Crower Level 3- --- 7.37
It's not like the car was slow, with the 2.41s a slippy th350, the apparent static 7.9:1 with the 268, with me and my tools and a full tank it'd do low 15s all day. It's not fast by any means, but it held it's own in the handful of light to lights I "observed" when it still ran. Farty civics included. I'm considering now the 212, and the level 3. From the sounds of it, the comp just won't cut it anymore. And I don't mind the engine being out of breath at 5500 with the manifolds. I will put headers on it eventually, I'd be fine with a little lost there in prep for future mods later. And I think the thumper would be too aggressive with my combo, right? https://www.summitracing.com/parts/cca-k92-600-5/overview/make/buick
For sake of clarification, the TA 212-350 was revised and doesn't look exactly like it shows in their catalog, according to a cam card I have, which shows 280/285 duration @.006, so it has the same IVC point of the Crower level 3 cam for the Buick 350, which is 66* @4* advance. Complete spec details of the TA 212-350 cam card: 280/285 duration @.006 218/230 duration @.050 valve lift @1.55 rr .454/.456 I/E (.440/.441 @1.5 rr) 110 LSA
It's as simple as calculating displacement for the engine itself: The bore of the dish is 3.05 and the 'stroke' (depth) is .085. So take .7854 and multiply it by it by the diameter (bore) twice, then once by the stroke (depth) to get your displacement in cubic inches. Then multiply it by 16.3871 to get the conversion to cubic centimeters, and you'll have your dish volume. This assumes the dish doesn't have slanted sides (which it does), so I usually just use the final answer as a 'closest possible guess', or you could round down a cc or two since the slanted sides of the dish would remove a small amount of displacement. So it's .7854 x 3.05 x 3.05 x .085 x 16.3871, which gives 10.1768 cc dish size. I usually just call them '10 cc' dishes, but they may be closer to 8 or 9. (?) I think 10 is close enough.
There's a bit of a discrepancy with the deck height on the Buick 350 (and probably all engines), with more added (we think) as they matured through the years (as well as more material added to the heads). I strongly suspect that the reason for this was structural stability (for one), as well as the fact that some blocks would clean up better than others when it came time to do the machine work to true up the deck mating surfaces, which would explain why some deck heights are taller than others, though they put a number down in the books for reference, which is usually shorter than what they ended up being. This resulted in actual static compression ratios being much less than the 'advertised' compression, as we've all seen. If a person wanted to go the cast replacement route and get the 340p pistons, they'd have to remove a generous amount of deck height to get the compression above 9.5:1. It's not necessarily a bad path to travel down, but expect machining costs to be considerable, which you'd want to do anyway to make sure everything's true, no matter if you were doing a bone stock rebuild or a street/strip combination.
Also notice on the calculator that Larry is using, that if you change the installation point of the cam, it will affect the dynamic compression ratio because it changes when the intake valve closes. So if your DCR ends up being a bit too high or low, you can alter the install point of the cam to bring it to a more desirable location.
A couple of comments on machining rough castings for OEM's... There's some other reasons for dimensions being off. Mostly assembly issues to avoid a very expensive 'line down' situation or warranty issues, like 'won't run' . One Co. I worked with was responsible for $10k/hr if our part caused a line down. Yep. Zero deck in this case is probably referring to the minimum they can cut things and not have some type of assembly problem, such as lifter preload or anything else that 'could' cause an assembly line to stop. Castings generally have .100"+ to the raw surface, so that height would be the most logical to use up if more dimension is needed. The tolerance call-out often allows more leeway to solve various problems from the rough cast surface. Other times there's problems with the molds and the casting itself and how the casting might finish up at the other end (such as a cam boss or other cast feature might end up off center),...or worse yet, how tolerance stack up can go crazy when the very first operation to establish a surface and then a datum has it's tolerance 'used up' or exceeded from the get go. Other mating components (like heads and intakes) also have a certain tolerance range and aren't produced at the same facility and often not at the same time...so if you can't bolt them up there has to be a solution that works for every (most) situation. Within the mating component X factor is also the possibility that a tool change or casting problem on that end causes the middle of the run to have the tolerances jump to the other end of the spectrum. To make things worse, things arrive at some convergence point and without 100% inspection or communicated changes if within the wide tolerance range...so surprises happen. Things like deck height can be an easy fudge factor for a complicated and remotely produced collaboration of parts that have to come together.
Leaning towards the 212 or the thumper... do ta cams have 4* of advance built in? So wouldn't it already be 4* advanced?
In a perfect world, yes, but nothing is perfect, if it was, you could just put the cam in with a stock gearset and one keyway, and all would be right with the world. The bottom line is you have to degree the cam in to verify the timing events. That's why it pays to use the 9 keyway sets that TA sells. Sometimes you have to use a different keyway, or even skip a tooth to get it in right.
Leave the thumpr in the garbage. Powernation tv or whatever it was called on spike did a build with it. TA intake, hooker headers, heads with big valves done by mike Phillips ( am&p Buick builder) flowing 245 cfm with hyperutectic h522 Pistons, at about 9.8 compression. Made 303 hp with 36 degrees of timing. The 212 would be another 30 hp with the same combo. Without headers and intake the crower could be around there also.
Yep, getting 340p pistons, and as of now nothing decked is the plan, but I haven't had the chance to measure how much in the hole the 4 corners are. Need to wait anyway until crank is fixed (#7 spun) and rods are checked out/fixed with new bolts and the 340p pistons installed and new bearings. Block needs tanked anyway, so it'll be at the shop regardless. Heads were surfaced when VJ was done. Head gasket looked uniformly compressed after 5500 miles.
