Has anybody ever heard of doing camshaft upgrade for the 4.3l v6? i have a buddy that did one on his tacoma. As I understand it he got new camshafts with bigger "teardrops"/cams and it improved his engine power significantly. Has anybody heard of this for the 4.3L v6?

 

Summit racing lists about 35 different camshafts for the 4.3L chevy. The thing with cams, is you don't want the biggest they have. Unless it's a dedicated racing vehicle, anyway.

You need to factor things such as automatic or stick shift, if automatic, the torque converter stall speed is very important. Also, your rear end gearing is important, too.

How about your heads? too big of a cam will decrease your dynamic, or "effective" compression ratio, resulting in a doggy, unresponsive truck with horrible mileage.

A mismatched/too large cam will make your truck into an absolute dog on the street. The bigger the cam is, the higher your torque peak moves up. A cam that doesn't start pulling until 5000 rpm will be useless in a 4800 lb truck.

going a step or two larger than stock, on both lift and duration can gain some useful hp/tq; but you really gotta do your homework on the right one for your needs.

 

thanks man that is some really useful information. I appreciate it. I will definitely do much more research before I commit myself to anything. I am pretty much just exploring options right now and that info is a big help.

 

I have heard that the rockers crash with more lift

 

With hgiher lift cams you may need to change springs and rocker arms.With the roller cam engine make sure you buy a cam thats computer compatible or reprogram your chip.

 

Forgot about valve springs! With much more than stock lift, they'll bind up.

How much cam can the computer compensate for before a reprogramming is necessary? My experience with cams is from old-school carb-ed small blocks. Never thought about it with the newer electronic engines.

 

As for computer compatible cams check out summit the off quite a few.