Trouble!!! Help. Put stage 3 crow cam in my EA and lost power!!!! - Ford Forums - Mustang Forum, Ford Trucks, Ford Focus and Ford Cars

Grant Porter · 11-18-2003, 14:51

Ive got an EA 3.9 mpfi, with 2.5" exhaust, extractors, hi-flow cat, and a cold air intake K&N Pod filter. The next thing that I did to her was put a Crow cam stage 3 and vernier cam gear in - it seemed like the next performance mod to do. The vernier cam gear at the moment is set on stock setting.

It is as doughy as buggery down low but still got the same power up high. I used to be able to do consistent 8secs to 100 km, now it is flat doing 10secs.

Should I be advancing or retarding the cam gear???

Whats going on? the lift on the new cam was lots more than the old and the degrees were lots wilder!!!!

blueoval · 11-18-2003, 15:05

I reckon you need an aftermarket chip to really sort out the power issues of the cam. Also is the fuel pump up to the task of the bigger cam?

Might be time to go and put the car on the dyno and see where the problems lye.

I_wanna_XA · 11-18-2003, 15:53

did you disconnect the battery?

blueoval · 11-18-2003, 15:56

good question - the cpu will need to learn the characteristics of the new cam fully to distinguish its fuel calculations. The cpu will learn over time but not straight away. I still recommend a piggy back chip though to get accurate settings.

Grant Porter · 11-18-2003, 16:00

Yeah, I did do it the first time when I put the cam in. Should I be reseting the computer each time I change a setting on the vernier cam gear????

Jah_Nix · 11-18-2003, 16:09

One can ask Did you put the shim kit and valve springs in too?
The stage 3 I believe uses a chiptorque chip

Does she stall when breaking/spinning steering wheel at idle/When AC goes on?

Grant Porter · 11-18-2003, 16:14

Well as far as I know, it is normally only with reground camshafts that shims are required, and I was talking to CF Performance about the valve springs and they said there is no need to replace them.

Yeah, sometimes it will stall with load from steering and AC, but all in all it seems to idle a lot better than I expected!!

Grant Porter · 11-18-2003, 16:15

I think the only reason they put chips in them is mostly to improve Idle quality

SVO XR6 · 11-18-2003, 19:08

did you dial in the cam proplery? and disconect the battery! It will take a while to re learn but its well worth it.

xdc351 · 11-18-2003, 19:49

Piggy back chips are used so the fuel and ignition maps can be changed by connecting the chip into a notebook.

That way they put the car on a dyno and make changes directly while they're running the car on the dyno, measuring if the car is running rich/lean, pinging, etc and adjusting the settings right there and then.

You can wait for your ECU to relearn itself, however its possible the maps required for your cam to run properly are outside what the stock computer can learn (but this I doubt). Its much quicker and more precise to install a piggyback, this way if any other changes are made its 30mins on a dyno and your tuned perfectly again.