TL-s/RL camshaft question
09-22-2019, 10:58 AM
#1
TL-s/RL camshaft question
One thing I've noticed about these J series engines is they dont make power up top like many of the other hondas. Why is this?
Is it the intake or camshafts that are the initial restriction?
Most seem to stop making power after 5500rpms. Does anyone know how many rpms these camshafts make power to when tuned?
Is it the intake or camshafts that are the initial restriction?
Most seem to stop making power after 5500rpms. Does anyone know how many rpms these camshafts make power to when tuned?
09-22-2019, 11:23 AM
#3
Dynapack
303/254
Mods
Jpipe
Pre Cat Deletes
Dual Exhaust
PNP 3.7L Intake manifold
PNP Runners
3.7 ZDX Throttle Body
Cold Air Intake
Brand new Dynocom 5000 Roller Dyno
294/277
Mods
Jpipe
Pre Cat Deletes
Dual Exhaust
PNP 3.7L Intake manifold
PNP Runners
3.7 ZDX Throttle Body
Cold Air Intake
Spec Stage 3+ Clutch
Spec 14lb Aluminum Lightweight Flywheel
303/254
Mods
Jpipe
Pre Cat Deletes
Dual Exhaust
PNP 3.7L Intake manifold
PNP Runners
3.7 ZDX Throttle Body
Cold Air Intake
Brand new Dynocom 5000 Roller Dyno
294/277
Mods
Jpipe
Pre Cat Deletes
Dual Exhaust
PNP 3.7L Intake manifold
PNP Runners
3.7 ZDX Throttle Body
Cold Air Intake
Spec Stage 3+ Clutch
Spec 14lb Aluminum Lightweight Flywheel
just to show you a few.
09-22-2019, 11:26 AM
#5
I've read that camshaft is limited on lift but these are the best OEM option. I've also read that some people think that the engine just doesnt breath well enough even though the head itself breathes very well?
Mostly wondering because I'm building an engine to put into something for next year. Know any brands that have stiffer valve springs?
09-22-2019, 11:31 AM
#6
https://acurazine.com/forums/3g-tl-p...mplete-897606/
Finally getting around to posting something here. Been busy.
Over most of the summer I was working with King Motorsports Unlimited on building the top end of my J35a8. The car is finally done and back on the road, runs perfectly, and has cost me one F'ing pretty penny.
High Level Overview:
The goal - port j35a8 heads, mill them for 12:1 compression, and run a Stage 3 cam regrind
The budget - $10k, the actual final cost: $13,378 (includes $1500 to replace the head I blew out prior to starting the project, and the 105k maintenance) - technically you could call it $16,578 if you include the $3200 i spent on Gerz's heads
Build sheet: Attachment 48154
Additional engine mods list for reference:
atlp v2 catback
rv6 v3 pcd
rv6 v3 jpipe
custom intake
3.7 mani/tb
Bisimoto valve springs/retainers
Storytime and charts:
This all started back in January 2013, when I talked with Gerzand about doing a build and he suggested I buy his decked/ported J32a3 heads, valves, and intake runners. The idea being I would mimic his build and ditch my j35 heads, aside from the cam profile. I agreed with the caveat that the heads were still in his car and I would need to wait until late May/early June to receive them. I agreed to that as well, fronted him $3200, and eventually May came and I received my heads. Joy of joys. I planned on getting to work shortly after that but was moving at the time.
Well wouldn't you know it, on June 14th, I was taking a trip to Chicago and blew the spark plug out of one of my stock j35 heads. This was the start of the actual build and was both a blessing and a curse.
I took the car to King, along with the new j32a3 heads that I got from Gerzand, and put them to work. I had them flow the j32 heads, and CC them - Gerzand's shop told him they made 13.5 compression with 60 thou milled off. Well it was pretty disappointing to say the least as his shop had only actually milled 20 thou, and the heads were only making 11.5:1 - the porting on them was good as it matched a Type-S head, at least.
So the decision was made to scrap Gerzand's heads, call the $3200 an exploratory loss along with whatever money I spent on flowbenching and CC'ing everything, and to then invest in my J35 heads. King used my blown head for testing purposes and ported out the easy stuff on a cylinder and flowed it. The cfm gains were solid as expected, so I dropped 1500 bucks on a brand new j35 cylinder head to replace the one I blew out, and decided to pursue the route of porting J35 heads and milling them for more realistic compression - the target was 12:1
Things turned out nicely when the heads were done being ported - here is the flow chart from that:
Attachment 48155
Milling the heads was on hold until we got some cam regrinds in our hands. This is where the project started to go awry and added another month to the timeline. Bypassing Bisimoto and going straight to the source of the regrinds, Webcams, we dicked around with some specs and settled on a Stage 3 for a TL they had done in the past. When the cams came back, they were degree'd and it was found that the valve timing was way off between front and rear cams. Centerline was perfect on the front, but the rear was off. Webcams comp'd us another set of cams, reground again with the same results.
The following are charts produced from measuring the lift every 10 degrees on a full rotation of the crank, for both cams. You can clearly see where the timing is off:
Attachment 48156
Attachment 48157
The problem here was that it was determined there is some goofy lobe separation from the factory TL cams, so when you regrind - the bigger you go on the cam, the more pronounced the separation. You'd probably never notice until you were on a dyno. The car would still fire up and idle ok, although we found a bug in Flashpro's live-tuning tables that caused the car to go on the fritz that at first we attributed to the cams.
There's a bit more to it but the process of measuring everything and proving out that Webcams' regrinds were causing valve timing issues, degree'ing stock cams and a couple sets of regrinds, blah blah blah ended up costing roughly $4k just in labor. I probably chewed through $6k on the cams alone which was absurd.
The conclusion is that you can regrind the TL cams and it will run, however, with a big enough regrind, you will lose a shitload of power down low and have some odd behavior above 6400 rpm. With the regrind by itself, I lost 40 wtq at 2k and by 3k it was leveling out. Up top, there was a solid digger from the cam position and valve timing being fucked.
The solution here was to make some custom cuts on the cam gears themselves, to physically reposition the cams. This fixed the valve timing so it was only off by a couple degrees which is not a big deal, and resolved ALL of my power loss issues. With the cam gears in place, I was able to retain all of my low end torque from when I had stock cams. The dyno chart line is almost identical as you will see.
So anyways, in the midst of this the heads were being milled, and we hit a limit of 40 thou on j35a8 heads because the center cylinders were at their piston-to-valve clearance limit by that point. It was still enough to make 12:1 compression exactly, which I was happy with.
These are some other interesting notes that show in the bottom right the CC results for the compression on my stock J35 heads, Gerzand's j32a3 heads, and finally my decked j35 heads:
Attachment 48158
There were so many nights at the shop and phone calls over the course of the summer that I can't remember it all now - it's just a blur.
The final result is a very well-built, well-tuned J35 motor - make no mistake, the car sounds wicked and runs strong for what it is. Is it worth the money? Not that much - I think if there wasn't as much R&D needed, a project like this would cost half as much. As it stands, I was forced to sink a LOT more cash into it than I really wanted to. I actually got so fed up with everything that I whimsically went out and bought my BMW 135 (which I had honestly wanted to pick up for years anyway).
That said, King was meticulous and everything was done right. I was able to be there for a lot of what was going on, and interact with them on a regular basis, which was a very good experience in engine building. You pay a premium, but the end result will be a properly running engine. People definitely need to understand that engine building is a precision process, not a slap-it-together and hope it works type of thing.
My advice to anyone looking to get fully built NA power on the TL would be this: Stop. Go the other direction. Just go with boost instead. I'm about 75 whp over stock with everything I have done. You aren't going to see more gains over stock than me on NA unless you get lucky with a miracle cam. At this point the only thing I'm missing is a 3" dump in the exhaust. Anybody can run dyno charts that pump higher numbers, but at the end of the day it's about the gains from stock to now. How much MORE power are you making over stock? It's very important to keep that perspective if you are considering going full NA. There's a SHITLOAD of hearsay on the forums and people spouting off about 350-375 whp with absolutely nothing to back it up and no context to what baseline whp was. Don't get caught up in that bullshit.
With a perfect cam, I believe you could get another 15-20 whp - but still you will basically hit a ceiling even in that scenario around +100 whp over stock.
I'm beating a dead horse here a bit but please, I'm trying to legitimately warn you if you are interested in building an NA TL, keep your expectations realistic. If not, you will be sorely disappointed.
Future plans for the car are most likely to continue weight reduction hopefully south of 3200 pounds, replace the clutch master cylinder and ETD, and keep the mileage off as best I can. It's not a DD anymore and my 135i has taken that role for summer, and I will most likely pick up a 335xi for the Wisconsin winters.
Final dyno chart:
Attachment 48159
Over most of the summer I was working with King Motorsports Unlimited on building the top end of my J35a8. The car is finally done and back on the road, runs perfectly, and has cost me one F'ing pretty penny.
High Level Overview:
The goal - port j35a8 heads, mill them for 12:1 compression, and run a Stage 3 cam regrind
The budget - $10k, the actual final cost: $13,378 (includes $1500 to replace the head I blew out prior to starting the project, and the 105k maintenance) - technically you could call it $16,578 if you include the $3200 i spent on Gerz's heads
Build sheet: Attachment 48154
Additional engine mods list for reference:
atlp v2 catback
rv6 v3 pcd
rv6 v3 jpipe
custom intake
3.7 mani/tb
Bisimoto valve springs/retainers
Storytime and charts:
This all started back in January 2013, when I talked with Gerzand about doing a build and he suggested I buy his decked/ported J32a3 heads, valves, and intake runners. The idea being I would mimic his build and ditch my j35 heads, aside from the cam profile. I agreed with the caveat that the heads were still in his car and I would need to wait until late May/early June to receive them. I agreed to that as well, fronted him $3200, and eventually May came and I received my heads. Joy of joys. I planned on getting to work shortly after that but was moving at the time.
Well wouldn't you know it, on June 14th, I was taking a trip to Chicago and blew the spark plug out of one of my stock j35 heads. This was the start of the actual build and was both a blessing and a curse.
I took the car to King, along with the new j32a3 heads that I got from Gerzand, and put them to work. I had them flow the j32 heads, and CC them - Gerzand's shop told him they made 13.5 compression with 60 thou milled off. Well it was pretty disappointing to say the least as his shop had only actually milled 20 thou, and the heads were only making 11.5:1 - the porting on them was good as it matched a Type-S head, at least.
So the decision was made to scrap Gerzand's heads, call the $3200 an exploratory loss along with whatever money I spent on flowbenching and CC'ing everything, and to then invest in my J35 heads. King used my blown head for testing purposes and ported out the easy stuff on a cylinder and flowed it. The cfm gains were solid as expected, so I dropped 1500 bucks on a brand new j35 cylinder head to replace the one I blew out, and decided to pursue the route of porting J35 heads and milling them for more realistic compression - the target was 12:1
Things turned out nicely when the heads were done being ported - here is the flow chart from that:
Attachment 48155
Milling the heads was on hold until we got some cam regrinds in our hands. This is where the project started to go awry and added another month to the timeline. Bypassing Bisimoto and going straight to the source of the regrinds, Webcams, we dicked around with some specs and settled on a Stage 3 for a TL they had done in the past. When the cams came back, they were degree'd and it was found that the valve timing was way off between front and rear cams. Centerline was perfect on the front, but the rear was off. Webcams comp'd us another set of cams, reground again with the same results.
The following are charts produced from measuring the lift every 10 degrees on a full rotation of the crank, for both cams. You can clearly see where the timing is off:
Attachment 48156
Attachment 48157
The problem here was that it was determined there is some goofy lobe separation from the factory TL cams, so when you regrind - the bigger you go on the cam, the more pronounced the separation. You'd probably never notice until you were on a dyno. The car would still fire up and idle ok, although we found a bug in Flashpro's live-tuning tables that caused the car to go on the fritz that at first we attributed to the cams.
There's a bit more to it but the process of measuring everything and proving out that Webcams' regrinds were causing valve timing issues, degree'ing stock cams and a couple sets of regrinds, blah blah blah ended up costing roughly $4k just in labor. I probably chewed through $6k on the cams alone which was absurd.
The conclusion is that you can regrind the TL cams and it will run, however, with a big enough regrind, you will lose a shitload of power down low and have some odd behavior above 6400 rpm. With the regrind by itself, I lost 40 wtq at 2k and by 3k it was leveling out. Up top, there was a solid digger from the cam position and valve timing being fucked.
The solution here was to make some custom cuts on the cam gears themselves, to physically reposition the cams. This fixed the valve timing so it was only off by a couple degrees which is not a big deal, and resolved ALL of my power loss issues. With the cam gears in place, I was able to retain all of my low end torque from when I had stock cams. The dyno chart line is almost identical as you will see.
So anyways, in the midst of this the heads were being milled, and we hit a limit of 40 thou on j35a8 heads because the center cylinders were at their piston-to-valve clearance limit by that point. It was still enough to make 12:1 compression exactly, which I was happy with.
These are some other interesting notes that show in the bottom right the CC results for the compression on my stock J35 heads, Gerzand's j32a3 heads, and finally my decked j35 heads:
Attachment 48158
There were so many nights at the shop and phone calls over the course of the summer that I can't remember it all now - it's just a blur.
The final result is a very well-built, well-tuned J35 motor - make no mistake, the car sounds wicked and runs strong for what it is. Is it worth the money? Not that much - I think if there wasn't as much R&D needed, a project like this would cost half as much. As it stands, I was forced to sink a LOT more cash into it than I really wanted to. I actually got so fed up with everything that I whimsically went out and bought my BMW 135 (which I had honestly wanted to pick up for years anyway).
That said, King was meticulous and everything was done right. I was able to be there for a lot of what was going on, and interact with them on a regular basis, which was a very good experience in engine building. You pay a premium, but the end result will be a properly running engine. People definitely need to understand that engine building is a precision process, not a slap-it-together and hope it works type of thing.
My advice to anyone looking to get fully built NA power on the TL would be this: Stop. Go the other direction. Just go with boost instead. I'm about 75 whp over stock with everything I have done. You aren't going to see more gains over stock than me on NA unless you get lucky with a miracle cam. At this point the only thing I'm missing is a 3" dump in the exhaust. Anybody can run dyno charts that pump higher numbers, but at the end of the day it's about the gains from stock to now. How much MORE power are you making over stock? It's very important to keep that perspective if you are considering going full NA. There's a SHITLOAD of hearsay on the forums and people spouting off about 350-375 whp with absolutely nothing to back it up and no context to what baseline whp was. Don't get caught up in that bullshit.
With a perfect cam, I believe you could get another 15-20 whp - but still you will basically hit a ceiling even in that scenario around +100 whp over stock.
I'm beating a dead horse here a bit but please, I'm trying to legitimately warn you if you are interested in building an NA TL, keep your expectations realistic. If not, you will be sorely disappointed.
Future plans for the car are most likely to continue weight reduction hopefully south of 3200 pounds, replace the clutch master cylinder and ETD, and keep the mileage off as best I can. It's not a DD anymore and my 135i has taken that role for summer, and I will most likely pick up a 335xi for the Wisconsin winters.
Final dyno chart:
Attachment 48159
The following 3 users liked this post by justnspace:
09-22-2019, 11:42 AM
#7
But I'm just going for a mild OEM build that's going into a civic or accord.
Not going for a ton of power but just a quick DD.
Maybe 300whp but there arent many dynos done with the AEM or the kind if mods I'd like to do.
J35a3
RL cams
DNJ 12:1 high compression pistons
3.7 intake/TB
Headers
Full exhaust
I feel like either the intake or cams will limit the power I'll be able to make. What do you think?
Also. My choices are mostly being made for a reliability factor that's why everything is mostly OEM lol
The following users liked this post:
justnspace (09-22-2019)
Trending Topics
09-22-2019, 11:49 AM
#8
i'm fully bolted on with my 6MT J32(stock- stock cams, stock heads) and make about 241-250whp. (havent redyno'ed since I e-tuned)
Im pretty happy with my car....
I pull on pretty much anything that tries me, about 70% of the cars on the street.
that 30% are the faster cars and dont even waste their time on me. but pretty much anything else, I pull.
Im pretty happy with my car....
I pull on pretty much anything that tries me, about 70% of the cars on the street.
that 30% are the faster cars and dont even waste their time on me. but pretty much anything else, I pull.
09-22-2019, 11:53 AM
#9
v6 chargers, v6 challengers, older v8's including trucks, I pull.
I pull away from ecoboost and other turbo 4 cylinders.
trucks are the cockiest, tho. I can gap them pretty easily...they think because they have a large v8 they'll win...shit, SEE YA!
I have trouble with Evo's and STi's tho. they have that mid-range torque that gaps the fuck outta me.
newer v8s will destroy me, 5.0 'stangs and Chevy SS, camaros. They dont even try me.
but anything else on the street my little 3.2l pulls ahead.
I pull away from ecoboost and other turbo 4 cylinders.
trucks are the cockiest, tho. I can gap them pretty easily...they think because they have a large v8 they'll win...shit, SEE YA!
I have trouble with Evo's and STi's tho. they have that mid-range torque that gaps the fuck outta me.
newer v8s will destroy me, 5.0 'stangs and Chevy SS, camaros. They dont even try me.
but anything else on the street my little 3.2l pulls ahead.
Last edited by justnspace; 09-22-2019 at 11:58 AM.
The following users liked this post:
Thefireball (04-26-2021)
09-22-2019, 11:54 AM
#10
Yeah I was just wondering because I didnt want to waste my time doing extras if I dont have to lol.
I saw some pretty cool ideas with like dual throttle body designs and stuff that doesnt look like it would be too tough but while trying to do it right looks like it might take some more research.
Above all i just want it to be reliable and sporty. I own other J series and the torque and reliability has me. This is my engine lmao.
I just didnt want to get to the dyno and not do valve springs and have bend a valve because I might make power 7k plus or end up choking my engine and losing potential gains by not investing more effort.
I saw some pretty cool ideas with like dual throttle body designs and stuff that doesnt look like it would be too tough but while trying to do it right looks like it might take some more research.
Above all i just want it to be reliable and sporty. I own other J series and the torque and reliability has me. This is my engine lmao.
I just didnt want to get to the dyno and not do valve springs and have bend a valve because I might make power 7k plus or end up choking my engine and losing potential gains by not investing more effort.
09-25-2019, 09:35 AM
#11
Burning Brakes
One thing I've noticed about these J series engines is they dont make power up top like many of the other hondas. Why is this?
Is it the intake or camshafts that are the initial restriction?
Most seem to stop making power after 5500rpms. Does anyone know how many rpms these camshafts make power to when tuned?
Is it the intake or camshafts that are the initial restriction?
Most seem to stop making power after 5500rpms. Does anyone know how many rpms these camshafts make power to when tuned?
Flashpro will offer good gains on the J series, it just doesn't manifest as big top end numbers.
However the SOHC J37A4 has VTEC on the exhaust and intake and this makes great power, the example below made 318WHP and 274WTQ.
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EvilVirus (09-27-2019)
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Acura TL Builder (04-17-2020),
csmeance (10-29-2019),
EvilVirus (10-28-2019),
Slpr04UA6 (10-29-2019)
04-17-2020, 06:13 PM
#13
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