Piper Cams

[SuperDave]

As some know, and some don't know I've been using the Piper Stage 2 cams for close to a year now. Yes they work fine on the stock ECU, but the gains are minimal. They really need tuning to bring the best out of them. They are a little flat driving off from idle so require the revs to be above 1200 rpm for a decent getaway, feels like stock under 3000 rpm, but once 4000 rpm hits they pull nice and hard, all the way to 7000 rpm where my stock intake and exhaust are probably restricting things a bit. They still have gains over stock cams above 7000 though. The torque between 3500 and 7000 is meaty, and even chirps into third (I don't use rubbish tyres). Don't just look at the peak figure, look at the mid range improvement; for example at 6000 rpm there is an approx 10 kW gain!

Blue is stock

The line just above blue is stock ECU with the cams

And the other lines are just various stages of the tune.

For comparison T_Money and myself did some testing to see how they compare in acceleration. The test was 8-100 km/h (real 100 km/h, not indicated on the speedo as third gear is required to hit 100 km/h). Why these speeds? Well to be a fair comparison we needed to remove the launch from the equation, and even then there will be slight variances in the take off so the starting speed was raised from 0 to 8 km/h (8 was a just a random low number, no real significance). So the results;

Piper Stage 2 cams + PowerFC = 7.59s

Stock Sportivo + PowerFC = 7.80s (I also got this exact figure on mine before the cams).

So 0.2s quicker to 100 km/h.

[Guest]

nice midrange gains, sucks about the loss of low end power (big hole between ~3000 - 3700 rpm) any way you can fix this?

[SuperDave]

nice midrange gains, sucks about the loss of low end power (big hole between ~3000 - 3700 rpm) any way you can fix this?

To be honest I don't notice it. I typically shift around 3000 rpm on the street anyway.

Reducing the restriction to the exhaust and intake might help it out though.

[CME-LFT]

So for someone who has done 2/5inch cat back, intake and ported headers but doesnt want to change the ecu just yet due to various reasons, is it worth the money if im looking for that bit more torque/gain? In other words is it fairly noticeable?

[123R-Prozak]

speaking of cams and ported... if i were to ripp my head off, send it away to get ported, perhaps bigger stronger valves + springs.. + stg 2 cams... what improvements do i expect with stock ecu? cause i really dnt wanna get a new ecu + tune, its soo expensive :(

[xoom]

speaking of cams and ported... if i were to ripp my head off, send it away to get ported, perhaps bigger stronger valves + springs.. + stg 2 cams... what improvements do i expect with stock ecu? cause i really dnt wanna get a new ecu + tune, its soo expensive :(

ur concerned about the expense of an ecu + tune but yet ur more than happy to cough up on getting the head ripped off, p&p + getting ur valve train + cams sorted ...... :blink: :blink: ......... im speechless

pay a machine shop a visit and ask for a quote to get all that work done and u might re-think even modifying it ...... not trying to deter u or put u off or be rude but if money is a concern then modifying cars is not the hobby that u want to have ......

[SuperDave]

speaking of cams and ported... if i were to ripp my head off, send it away to get ported, perhaps bigger stronger valves + springs.. + stg 2 cams... what improvements do i expect with stock ecu? cause i really dnt wanna get a new ecu + tune, its soo expensive :(

As Bill said, visit a workshop for a quote. I wouldn't expect much change from $3000 with parts for that work.

There are gains on the stock ECU, but nothing great for the outlay. The whole VVT needs to be redone to suit the new cam profile, hence the big differences between my two curves.