I was curious on the factory cam specs of my 82 coupe so I wrote MSA and ask them. I also ask what they would suggest on a cam for my car. This is what they wrote back.

"The stock camshaft has a lift of .289 and a duration of .219. We would not recommend using a camshaft higher than the stage 3 due to the fuel shortages that will accrue with the stock fuel system. The main differences between the different camshaft stages 1,2,3 is going to be the power band and the idle. The higher the camshaft stage is the higher the power band will be. The same goes for the idle as well. With the higher power band the camshaft idle with be more rough. There is no way for us to determine what horsepower and torque increases you will see with different camshafts. There are many different factors that will determine horsepower and torque. If you have any questions please feel free to send me an e-mail.

Regards,

Jon Mccarty

Motorsport Auto
1139 West Collins Ave
Orange CA 92867
Ph.(800)633-6331
Fax(800)321-3777
www.zcarparts.com"

Quick response and cleared up my questions, this may help others so I thought I would throw it in here.

 

stock cam actually isnt that bad. just deck the head, add a header and youll have less than 500 bucks in upgrades to be extemely happy with.

 

Here's more stuff on L series engines:

engine design utility:
http://www.ozdat.com/ozdatonline/enginedesign/

Z cam specs:
http://www.geocities.com/bruskiz/ZCamSpecs.htm

Z garage:
http://www.geocities.com/zgarage2001/engine.html

fuel injector calc:
http://www.csgnetwork.com/injectorvolcalc.html


bla bla bla...

 

i tried the top ozdat on for my engine, but no info came my way. hows it work.

 

You should be able to pull the dropdown list of BLOCK, CRANK, HEAD, RODS, PISTONS, CAM.... and it will fill it all in for ya. Then just hit calculate. Of course, if you've bored & stroked it, and/or shaved the head, you need to put that in the calculations as well.

 

I have been messing around with the Desktop Dyno 2000 to try and see what could be had with the L28E but I have no idea what our rockers are classified as being I don't have lifters to my knowlege, so I have just been puting in solid for the lifters. All and all it seems to be close when I put in the "stock" specs of the engine. Just curious but does anyone know what the bore and stroke would be if it was a 3.1? I want to put those specs in also and see what it comes up with. I think all the specs the program ask for are in inches and not metric.

 

I went through and read almost that entire page on Zgarage, then the whole mod about pushing the P79/P90 heads up to 10.0:1 compression, just by modifying the head. Pretty interesting stuff. Even they said, it may not be still into your chevy small block range, but the increase in power was significant.

 

I just found a P90 head on a recked car the other day. I wanted some parts off it but I was pressed for time so I didn't take anything. I was thinking about taking the head and transmition. It will be siting there for a couple of mounths. there is a lot of good stuff on it, it was just involved in a reck and it is not driveable so it is to be parted out.

 

i decked my p79 head .080" to get 10.5:1, actually, ive done it to a couple of zeds, it works great, and if you keep stock timing you can run 87 pump gas. sure adds a crap load of pep to it.