I'm pretty new to understanding cars in general, but I've been wondering about cams lately. As far as I understand, the cams control the opening and closing of the values. So by upgrading the cams in our G's, it would change the amount of time the values are open/closed. So I'm guessing that after market cams introduce a more agressive timing for the values? If I were to have a stock G and upgrade the cams would it affect other systems of the car? Just basically wondering what the drawback to upgraded cams would be (other than price). I've read that they can add an additional 20 hp, but that number seems high to me, anybody know how much they actually add?

 

More aggressive cams usually add high end horsepower and take away from low end.

http://auto.howstuffworks.com/camshaft.htm

Give that a read.

 

2 'V's in valves.

And i second Pwoz.

 

ha ha, yes there are two V's in valves. It's weird, I spell it right in my head, but when I type it always comes out as values. Stupid I/O error between my hands and my brain.

 

Depends on the lift and duration of the cams. They don't always have to take away from low end, but usually there is some kind of sacrifice.

 

It will all depend on the duration and lift of the cam. Not all cams will make you loose low end power. There are different cams for FI and NA engines. Rule of thumb (at least in the old school setups) if you are to install cams change your TB and replace the exhaust manifold with headers. If you have aggressive cams you need to change valves and springs. If you want more out of this setup you need to hone or port the head. Another rule of thumb when setting up an engine is if you will setup the top end of the engine you need to setup the bottom part as well. Changing pistons and rods, blueprinting the crank in some cases bore out the block to increase displacement. Now you can have NA setup with higher compression piston and play around with the length of the piston rod. FI setup lower compression pistons and and again different setup on the rods. There are a ton of things you can do to an engine. With todays engine being all computer reliant it gets harder and harder to setup an engine without fully understanding how all these gizmos work.