I have a 01 ITR and have Aem cold air intake, DC jdm headers, Skunk 2 stage II cams, gears, retainers, and valve springs, along with a vafc. Before when I had only intake and headers I ran a 14.87 with the elevation at 3900 ft. I have not had a chance to tune it yet, but I wanted to know where I was at so I raced a friend of mine. He has a civic hb. His best time was a 14.9. I figured since I installed this stuff it should still should run a little better, but it turns out I got killed like by 3 cars. Is this normal. Would tuning make a 5-7 car difference?

Bonnie

 

There are a lot of variables that could describe your "problem," but the bottom line is that you do need to tune the car to get the most out of what you have put into it.

 

tuning is the key.

 

Unfortunately, cams are not a "drop in and go" mod. I'd definetely try and get to the dyno asap.

 

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by bonnieornelas &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">I have not had a chance to tune it yet.</TD></TR></TABLE>

Therein lies the problem, eh?

 

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by bonnieornelas &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote"> I have not had a chance to tune it yet, but I raced a friend of mine.

Bonnie </TD></TR></TABLE>


No tuning and you're "Racing" it already.

As well, your results may not be related to the car/cams alone but rather the driver.

 

Same thing happened to my friends si when he put in his stage 1 cams. Here is the before and after MUSTANG dyno. Notice the huge difference after tuning, before his car would just die in VTEC.

Skunks are not "DROP IN AND GO" cams. Get those things tuned, and you'll have better luck.

 

I have a strong inclination that you still have oem pistons in which case your compression is 10:6, which is not nearly enough compression to utilize the potential of the skunk2 stage 2 cams, in fact you would have been better off going with skunk2 stage 1 cams with compression that low. Im running skunk2 stage 2's, though my compression is around 13:1...hope this helps you understand why the car may not be performing as you initially thought it would.

 

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by bonnieornelas &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">I have a 01 ITR and have Aem cold air intake, DC jdm headers, Skunk 2 stage II cams, gears, retainers, and valve springs, along with a vafc. Before when I had only intake and headers I ran a 14.87 with the elevation at 3900 ft. I have not had a chance to tune it yet, but I wanted to know where I was at so I raced a friend of mine. He has a civic hb. His best time was a 14.9. I figured since I installed this stuff it should still should run a little better, but it turns out I got killed like by 3 cars. Is this normal. Would tuning make a 5-7 car difference?

Bonnie </TD></TR></TABLE>

It takes skill to tune a cam setup so that it can kill a strong and well optimized stock engine...
I kicked that cam-thing to the moon and searched for a strong stock engine until I found one...better for peace of mind anyway.