Hi all,

I'm slapping in a 360 into my first gen, but as they never came in a first gen I figured I'd poke this question in here. Doing a mild build on a 360, cam, headers, 1.6RR, recast heads, etc. All the small things to maintain daily drivability with a kick. I've dug through some forums and haven't really found any good answers, maybe I'm using the wrong keywords. But what's the most amount of lift I can run with a cam before I need to change the length of the stock pushrods? I'm looking at the Comp Cam 20-604-9 which is a .512/.512 210/220 112LSA cam which I believe is really the most aggressive cam you can run before the computer starts getting pissy? (I do plan to get an SCT and go through HemiFever at some point to get everything running perfect). I don't have a problem ordering new pushrods I'm just curious if I would really need to. I really just want a nice lopey idle with some good grunt in the low end.

Any input helps!

Thanks, Josh

 

Lopey Idle, and computer controlled, don't really go well together. Also, if your truck is 95 or older, you can't tune the PCM. It is not flash programmable. Needs to be 96 or newer for that trick.

Only way to determine if your stock pushrods will work, is to see what the rocker to valve contact looks like when it is assembled.

 

Don't go to Hemifever, if you want my 2 cents. Sean used to be good but alot of the JTEC DCX crowd has moved to Ryan Hogan. Hit up Ryan at frptuning.com . He also sells full cam kits and everything, including pushrods.

https://frptuning.com/collections/31...um-cam-kit-360

 

Very valuable two cents lol, I went ahead and messaged them and they already got back to me! It's really just going to be one of those back and forth remote tuning scenarios but that doesn't bother me. I told them my planned specs and they just told me get a tuner, wideband, and get a data log and send it to them and they'll send me back a flash for the PCM. Probably wouldn't hurt to have a gauge in the truck somewhere anyway just to keep an eye on things (now comes the fun part of finding a not ugly place to put a gauge on a first gen).

 

I missed that this is going in a first gen. Are you swapping in the 97+ PCM along with the engine?

 

Correct, I know there’s a certain year range I need, I think 96-99? Unless I’m thinking of the harness which I’m probably going to yank off of a 5.2 Dakota if possible

 

Depends what you're trying to tie into it. If it's only going to be engine management, 01-03 5.2/5.9 harness would be preferable. If it's transmission management as well, needs to match transmission (either 97-99, 00 can vary to either harness depending on when during the model year, or 01-03).

 

I plan to run a 5 speed which I’m pretty sure only has 1 harness being the reverse switch so would be just the engine.

I’ve read that a Novak AX-15 is built stronger and can handle the ballpark of 385ft lbs so I’ll probably drop one of those in as it should handle my power I’ll be putting down, I’ve also heard I can swap in internals from the Supra turbo trans which would give me more wiggle room for, shenanigans, shall we say.

 

In that case, I'd say see if you can score a 01+ PCM and harness. The response rate and tuning window is much better than the 97-99's.

Finding a 5.2/5 speed PCM won't be very easy...so your next best option will be to use a common 5.2/5.9 auto harness out of any ram/dak/dur and get Ryan to convert it to manual programming. That's what he did for my Powerglide swap.

 

Yeah I figured that would be the case and he already told me he could program out the automatic stuff in the PCM, and as I don’t need anything for the trans in the harness I can just tuck it away.