installing KA24DE exhaust cam... help?

[fiznat]

I wasnt sure what section this would really go in, so I decided to throw it at my fellow KA-T guys... there's gotta be someone here who knows how to do this:

I took the exhaust cam out of the S13 engine that came with my new 240 (my KA-T engine is a 97 so I wanted the 248 e. cam..), and I wanted to throw the S14 engine's cam back into the S13 engine so that I could sell it as a running motor. Thing is though, I'm having trouble finding out how I'm supposed to line up the exhaust cam... There is a dowel pin on the end of the cam that fits into the cam sprocket... do I use that somehow? ...Or maybe I can use the intake side (which is still bolted in) as a reference?

Help me out guys, this is my first time installing cams...

[brage]

you won't be able to put that '97 cam into the S13 motor, the 91-96 KA had 6 cam towers, the 97/98 have 5! so there is no 6th journal on the 97 cam!

Otherwise you want to use the 248 cam as an intake cam ? rotate it 4 teeth counter clockwise..

-jeff

[fiznat]

are you sure? I set the cam into place and it looks like it fits fine... I only fiddled with it for like 5 minutes but it looks like it should fit if I can just get the positioning right... It snaps right into the head there.. Hmm maybe I'll look more closely at it tomorrow.

Either way, how are you supposed to line the cams up correctly?

[ShifDown96240SE]

Id like to know some detail about this too, especially about when you swap the bigger cams into the S14, which one goes where(what color) and do you change the positioning at all???

[EstoMax]

i installed 2 248 degree s13 cams into my 95 240sx, and they fit fine, the intake (s13 exhaust) cam i rotated 4 teeth counterclockwise, and that worked nice and dandy. i dono anything about the 5 vs 6 towers deal tho.

imo not a hard swap, first time ever i took an engine apart and took me about 5 hrs to install both. make sure you mark the cam/chain locations with paint first so u know where the new cams are and where to count off 4 teeth from

max

[Chezedik]

This just became for me, since I snapped one of my high end cams trying to shim my head, so I am picking up two pairs of 1991 cams, and I am going to run them in an S13. In my FSM it shows two different specs for shimming them for intake and exhaust sides, I would assume this is because of expansion due to heat on the exhaust side, but can anyone think of a different reason? Also, How important is it to shim the head absolutely correctly, I would assume it will allow for the properly seal valves, if it is shimmed to tightly, or not open enough if shimmed to loosely, but you can probably imagine my apprehension after snapping a cam in half. Anyone with answers, please chime in.

[jmhalder]

first, get a FSM and look at the diagram, they have a picture of the front cover off showing how many links should be between the drive sprocket and the two cam gears, now figure that if your swaping intake/exhaust to the opposite, your gonna half to rotate the gear 4 teeth in some direction. (tip: if the cars #1 is at TDC, the cams 1st lobes are directly opposing each other. ie... the intake cams first lobe is pointing directly to the left, the exhaust cam is pointing directly to the right... try to think of a failproof method to do this... it would be best if you could do this without taking off the front cover... i actually ended taking the top front cover off, cause we tried just kinda eyeballin it, each time one cam would be off a tooth in some direction, or both cams... although it was ALOT of work to get the top front cover off... good luck, i hope ive been of some help

[Chezedik]

Any horsepower increases? Documented or anecdotal? Is it a deep lope or just a little rougher than stock? Since I still have my aftermarket cam on the exhaust, would it be worth doing to keep it on the exhaust side, and put a stock exhaust cam on the intake side, so that way I still have the discrepency that I would normally. My concern is that 248 is only the advertised duration, right? This means it's true duration is somewhere near 215-220, right? Also, is anyone familiar with the lift on that?