33 replies to this topic

[Cooperman]

You won't be disappointed with the Evo 001 cam. The price - performance is excellent and in the 1293 Midget engine which I have just built it's running beautifully.

Owners and builders can go on and on about different cams, but the vast majority of time the car is not being driven to the limit of the engine power and what is important is the area under the torque graph. If you have a well-flowed head, a decent compression ratio and nice induction and exhaust systems, combined with good carburation, whichever cam you choose from the range of improved road cams will be good. I honestly doubt that if you got into a car with the parts mentioned optimised, you would not be able to tell the difference between an MG-Metro, Kent 266, SW5, MS Evo 001, Piper 270, etc. You might notice the difference on a timed lap of a racetrack but not on the road. Most modern mid-range cams are very good.

My 1990 Cooper historic rally car has an MG Metro cam with standard gear ratios and a 3.44:1 FDR. It has 83 bhp at 5900 rpm and peak torque of 83 ft. lbs at 3800 rpm. On the road I rarely go much over 5000 rpm so I am using most of the torque, but not much of the bhp when accelerating firmly in normal road driving.

I would add that those figures are with a 10.2:1 CR and 35.6 mm inlet valves.

[whistler]

 

 

I think I've pretty much decided to bite the bullet and get the Evo1 cam. Seems to be what I want, low down torque with good pull through the rev range.

I'll skip the cost of nitriding the crank as the gts was tuftrided and currently still on standard, needing to go to 10thou. Besides, I don't think nitriding is really necessary.

Then I may also not do head porting to keep costs down. I'd rather get balancing done and the right cam with the initial build. Head work can be done at a later stage... Maybe.

Minispares also have a distributor to match the EVO01 cam for not a lot of money.

So I also need a different distributor?

 

No, but to get the best out of any engine the ignition advance curve should be optimum for the camshaft (I think that's what I was told). You could use your existing distributor as is, have your distributor re-curved to suit or just buy a new distributor that's already set up for that camshaft. I chose the latter and when tuned on a rolling road the advance curve was correct. On my 1098 engine with a Piper 255 cam I had to send the standard distributor to H&H Ignition for them to re-curve it to the specification recommended by the rolling road tuning man (John Nutt of Nutt's Classic Cars).

[miniGTS]

So it turns out that my engine builder has a new Evo1 cam in stock. So I'll be taking that plus having the head ported and gas flowed and also having the motor balanced. So that should be a nice engine when it's done.

 

I'll post feedback when it's done. 

 

Thank you for all the feedback received.

Edited by miniGTS, 06 August 2025 - 12:22 PM.

[Cooperman]

You will be delighted with it.
Let us know how it drives when it is done.