The odds are pretty good that if you’ve spent any amount of time around modded vehicles – hot rods, chopped jobs, lifted trucks, etc. – that you heard someone talk about a “cammed car”.
What’s that mean, though?
Can any car be cammed?
Are there any performances reasons to cam a vehicle, or is it just a cosmetic kind of upgrade?
In this quick guide we go over (almost) everything you need to know about camming vehicles. The why behind the project, the benefits you’ll get out of it, and more!
Let’s get right into it, ok?
What is a Cammed Car?
Straight out of the gate, it’s important to understand that there are an almost unlimited amount of ways you could choose to modify your vehicle – and camming your car is just one of them.
A cammed car is just a short-term way to describe a vehicle that has had its OEM crankshaft replaced with a camshaft – almost always instantly boosting the performance of that vehicle (dramatically, too).
You’re going to have a tough time spotting a cammed car with the naked eye, though.
This isn’t anywhere near as noticeable as a lift job, new wheels and tires, a hood scoop, a wing, or a bunch of other mods that are immediately noticeable from the outside.
No, you’d actually have to start poking around under the hood of the vehicle to figure out whether or not a car has been cammed – unless you go up against it in a drag race, of course.
You’ll have a pretty good idea of whether or not a car has been cammed in that situation, that’s for sure.
What are the Benefits of Camming a Car?
The biggest reason to cam a car is to modify the duration as well as the timing of the valve openings inside of that engine.
Camshafts have lobes that work to push the valves open, working in concert with a crankshaft to change of the timing under the hood so that the vehicle performs better than it would have otherwise.
The end result is more air/fuel mixture finding its way into the cylinder, which directly results in a lot more performance from your engine – particularly in the horsepower department.
It’s not at all uncommon to significantly increase your horsepower (sometimes by 30% or more) just by choosing to cam a vehicle.
Obviously, this kind of work needs to be done by legitimate mechanics that know how to pull this off to perfection. But when done correctly it can totally transform the overall performance of a vehicle without altering its exterior performance even just a little bit.
Will Camming a Car Make It Faster?
Camming your vehicle doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s going to be faster, though it certainly means you’re going to get more horsepower – and that means more torque and the potential for significant speed.
No, you’re probably not going to see huge changes to overall top-end performance in the speed department.
If your vehicle has a tough time getting up to about 160 miles an hour it’s not going to instantly be able to push 180 or even 200 mph just because it was cammed.
Where you will see an almost instant improvement, though, is in the short time acceleration.
As soon as you hit that gas pedal you’re going to feel the difference between a cammed vehicle and one that hasn’t had this modification done. Your vehicle is going to be a whole lot more responsive but it’s also going to be a lot “throatier”, too.
If you’ve ever heard a stock car revving up (or even just idling) the odds are pretty good you know exactly what kind of engine sounds we are talking about here.
Your vehicle might even start to sound more like a motorcycle (or a couple of motorcycles) when you have a quality cam job done for you.
How Expensive is Camming?
Having your vehicle cammed isn’t the most expensive project you can undertake – but it isn’t the most affordable project, either.
Camming your vehicle is certainly going to cost less than putting a turbo in, that’s for sure.
You’re probably looking at a vehicle project that’s going to set you back anywhere between $700 and maybe $1400 or so all said and done.
Sometimes that’s going to be closer to the lower end of things (particularly if you’re looking to modify easier to work on vehicles with lots of aftermarket support, like a Honda Civic), but sometimes you’re going to push way beyond $1400 – especially if you’re looking to do a total performance overhaul.
Camming out a classic piece of American muscle like a vintage Mustang, for example, is always going to be a more expensive proposition than getting an early 2000s Honda Civic or Mitsubishi Eclipse rocking and rolling.
At the end of the day, though, it’s critically important that you have professionals tackle this project for you.
The last thing you want to do is turn this kind of job over to mechanics that usually focus on tire rotations and oil changes. Camming your vehicle needs to be done very carefully and very deliberately.
Performance shops are the best folks to turn to.
How Reliable are Cam Jobs?
At the end of the day, as long as your camming project was undertaken by legitimate professionals – performance experts that know what they’re doing and work on the kind of vehicle you’re bringing in all the time – you really don’t have all that much to worry about.
Even though you can improve horsepower performance by anywhere between 10% and 30% you aren’t going to shorten the lifespan of your vehicle with this modification.
Your fuel economy is probably going to take a tumble, to be fair, but you aren’t going to have to do oil changes more often and you aren’t going to wear out your engine faster than you would have if you left everything completely stock.
Just be sure (once again) to only ever have this work done by experts that have done it before – ideally on your exact vehicle model.