JWT Cams
By Aaron LaBeau
Photography by Greg Vogel & Aaron LaBeau 
Competition is a fierce aspect of life. Whether you’re competing for a job, house, or just plain ol' bragging rights at the drag strip, you’re bound to run into someone who thinks they can wipe the floor with you. With all the affordable aftermarket parts available these days they just might be able to. Hell, you can buy a fully installed nitrous kit at Pep Boys (an auto parts chain). Our techno nerd Mike Kojima has gone through great pain behind the keyboard explaining how cams work and what they do. Powered with this knowledge you can be the strong silent one at the track who collects the low E.T.’s and humbles the loud-mouth trash talkers.
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You know what the cams in your car are, right? Those big billet sticks that resemble a weapon used to adjust attitudes. The tuning experts down at Jim Wolf Technology have come up with just the surprise for that wicked ¼ mile, the S1 cams for the VQ35DE. For years we have been enjoying the JWT cams for our SR20 powered cars. The rolling burnouts are enough to make anyone a believer.
If you're going to change cams in your ride the power gains have to be worth it and in our book that means solid dyno proven data to the wheels. But the Altima will see more trips to the grocery store than it will to the drag strip. That means the car still has to purr like a kitten at idle. JWT achieved this by increasing the lift of the cam. Increasing the lift changes the height the valve is lifted off the valve seat. High end power remains like larger duration cams but you lose less in the low end grunt. The danger in increasing the lift is the higher speeds the valve opens and closes. JWT took great care to achieve higher valve lift while retaining the stock valve springs and keep a reliable valvetrain.
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On our first drive out power seemed the same as before until 5K RPM. Then the cams came to life similar to VTEC on a Honda. The result is a huge power gain on top; take it to redline, shift and you're right back at the fat end of the power with the new cams. Peak power gain on the dyno was 15 hp and a 20 hp gain right at fuel cut. For around town driving you can see the dyno graph crosses our baseline pull with the mods we have so far. The cams make for a Jeckel and Hyde nature of civility and plant-your-foot-to-the-floor excitement. Choose your temperament with your right foot.
With all the boasting we’ve done about this car it was time to get some timeslips shooting down the ¼ mile. How does a 14.1 second run at 100MPH sound!? For comparison we’ve seen other good timeslips in the mid to high 14’s on stock manual transmission Altimas at around 96MPH. To put it in perspective we rifled through some old test data from a print magazine and found that our Altima smoked the similarly powered Supercharged Pontiac Grand Prix Ram Air by a full second. Even more impressive is that we’re right on the heels of Pontiac’s new LS1 V8-powered GTO rated at 350hp and 365 ft-lbs. Said GTO flew through the quartermile at 14.0 sec at 102MPH. The extra grunt of the V8 and RWD definitely are at the GTO’s advantage but the Altima does have a 600 lb weight savings which aids handling and braking. Still, it’s impressive being this close in acceleration to a Corvette-powered sedan.
الداينو
http://www.nissanperformancemag.com/december03/altima_cams/images/dyno.jpg
http://www.nissanperformancemag.com/december03/altima_cams/
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