At last.....after talking to literally hundreds of people, ALL of whom use Kent cams with no hassle I got a third one, all new followers etc again and its going in. Vernier Cam wheel as well, for fine tuning of cam timing.
Dave is fitting it today and will drive it over the weekend so we shall soon see I have just done some Gearbox studying and I have a wide ratio kit in at the moment. Rather than swapping to a close ratio set, I'm going to drop the final drive totally with a new Crown Wheel and Pinion and keep the gears apart as they are, minus the drop on the pinion.
So after the cam is sorted, the 3.7:1 ratio comes out, and the 4.17 ratio goes in. Later we can go to a 4.5. But my colleagues Nova has that in and he runs out of revs on the long stuff.
Reason: The car as standard has a lot of torque, mid range. We are losing a bit of the low end and its being moved up the range with the higher profile cam. Should be good for proper clean power to 6500. They start to tail off as standard after 5900 ish normally. Might need a Chip. Already have a Fuel Pressure Regulator and a serious exhaust and filter kit.
As standard, the car would not quite reach the red line in 4th gear. It would go faster, in road speed, by changing up to 5th and that dropped the revs back to a torque level high enough to continue through the wind buffeting. Top speed in 4th was 110 at 6000rpm!!!
Way way too fast for a rally car....so the cam shall raise the potential revs and the lower final drive will drop the speed per gear. Going from a 3.7 to a 4.17 should drop that top speed in 4th at 6000 to 97mph. 13mph gone. Thats a good drop (I hope).
One of the venues we use has 2 very long straights......the top cars all run out of gears, about 135 to 140 mph.
Our 1.3 Skoda....deary me....we had time for tea and toast , and read the news paper while waiting for the car to get to 4th gear
Literally....no joke...its a great car, BUT its slow. Dave and I actually had small conversations on that straight this year. I got the giggles once and we literally had to move over, let the Pug205's and 106's past, and then try to nail them at the next chicane.
So this Astra should be bang in the middle
Fingers crossed guys