Hello All,

Today I talked to Jim of Sunbelt Performance located in Georgia. First off do not rush to call him or the company they are busy working on Rodger Foo's racing motors. But according to my friend Tomas Potter they are 100% awesome with the bp motors and our fs motors.

They will be releasing very soon several performance parts for the 2.0L Proteges.(ES, MP3 and MP5) So start saving your money.

To be realesed soon:

Mazda Street CAM 400 US dollars for the pair. These produce much more power to redline then the s20 cams.

Adjustable Cam Sprokets 250 US dollars. They will be the only company to offer these. Oh these are on Rodger Foo's Racing Protege 5.

Bigger brakes for up front. No price yet.

They will also have stiffer strut bars and more to come.

Also Tripoint sells the front black lips for about 600 dollars. They go under the motors to the fire wall. Helps block debrie away from the motor.

They will have their web page updated soon.
www.sunbeltperformance.com

 

I want the adjustable cam sprockets i've been looking for them for the longest time. Cool

 

yeah deffinitally tell us when he or his company will be releasing parts i am very interested in parts. i love new parts especially if they make my little bus move a little better

 

Cdglowp5, good information. I had heard that Sunbelt produced adjustable cam sprockets for the FP/FS engines after reading an article in SCC about them building the Mazda Protege engines for the World Challenge touring series cars. I found their web site a while ago and sent them an email, but never got a response. I'm pretty sure their web site doesn't list a phone number, how did you find it? Don't post it, I'm just curious how you got it.

 

Will the cams and sprockets work with a turbo??

 

what are the benefits of sprockets?

sorry, im trying to further my knowladge about engines. I know mostly audio and asthetic mods.

 

I think adjustable cam sprockets allow you to optimize the valve timing. If I'm not mistaken, they're also known as cam gears.

 

Correct, cam sprockets and gears are the same thing. They are a gear that bolts to the end of the cam which turns the cams by the timing belt which is also connected to the crank by a gear. Adjustable cam gears allow you to adjust cam timing (the point the intake valves open or close in relation the the location of the crankshaft/pistons and the ignition spark). This allows you to tune the engine for maxium power and/or adjust the power curve up or down in the RPM range. The adjustable cam gears will work with any other mods, and would probably be even more useful with a turbo or other more serious modifications. Cams would need to be developed either for forced inductation, or naturally aspirated applications seperately. The cam profiles required to maximize the performance or either application are different.

 

Woo Hoo!!!

I guess I will just have to order the Racing Beat cat back now and wait for the better cams to come out.

 

Generally, adjustable pulleys allow the cam shafts to brought to their designed timing angles and compensate for the various tolerance differences. Cam profiles are designed down to the exact degree, but when installed may be several degrees off due to tolerance stacking. By attaching a degree wheel to the crank shaft, and using a feeler gage at the valve tappet, the exact open and close angles can be located. The pulleys then allow for adjustment to proper specification.

When cam profiles get aggressive enough, which the Protégé’s aren’t, some tuning can be done that follows known philosophies and alters performance characteristics. As far as factory cams go, the development work is already done and any dyno work to find a better setting is just a shot in the dark. The best thing to do is simply degree the cams to factory spec. Both the stock and the J-spec cams would probably show little performance effect when adjusted, due to the lack of overlap and the low rpm nature of our engine’s overall state of tune.

Now if you designed your own cam profiles, and had them custom ground, you’d want to ensure they are first set to your specified angles, by degreeing the shafts. From there you may elect to change symmetry angle and/or overlap to effect a desired change following the known philosophies on which your design was based. But here we’re talking development work here, and not necessarily tuning. Multiple dyno runs may help, but track lap times may be the best measure of any gain. At this stage dyno time is probably better spent on tuning an intake track, or adjusting a fuel map.

I tried to bring up cam design before, but all I got was “get the ZE and Mspeed cams, they’re hot”, so I know we’re not talking custom work here. If I had to guess Sunbelt will be offering cams that work with the stock rev limit of the motor, and have specific lobe center specifications that their pulleys are meant to provide accurately. If I’m wrong, and they build some real lumpy sticks, then there may be some tuning ability. We’ll have to wait for the specs and see.

 

Sunbelt Performance builds the engines for many of the World Challenge Touring series Proteges. I'm sure they can design and produce whatever you desire as far as cam profiles or most anything else for that matter. The exiting thing about it is they are apparently willing to produce some of these parts for the daily driven street vehicle. They are the best resource I'm aware of for in depth knowledge of the FP/FS Mazda engines. I'd be happy just to hear what they have to say about what the best method is for producing power with these motors.

 

Yes, its always nice to have someone with Deeeeeeeeep pockets to R&D parts and motors and build-ups for the other 99.9% less fortunate others.

I am looking forward to good FS products and tech in the coming monthes.

 

well i live right down the street from sunbelt and since i was the first P5 to show up with a 5 speed i'm testing their cams out right now. i am also testing out mazcare's exhaust who is also right down the street from sunbelt. i am very pleased with both these items and yes it will be worth every cent.

 

Lupus, if their cams are in your car now please tell us more about them. Do you have the specs, do they have reduced base circle, did they require beefier springs, did they dyno the install, did you get the adustable pulleys? Also, when you say they're worth every penny, just haow many pennies is that?

Come on man out with it.

Pseudo, I agree that there is room to play with power curves thru cam timing on almost any engine. But as I said, those adjustments follow known philosophies and must be baselined thru the process of degreeing the cams first. I still don't think that the process would be worth while on our stock cams. Then again, I'm also sure valve timing tollerance variance is why so many dyno runs haven't shown rated out put on the FS-DE.

 

well the cams i am testing out are a cam they are building that will use the stock springs. basically just a bolt up kinda thing. i'm not to sure on the specs of it as i have not been told. i am going to dyno my car as soon as it gets back from the body shop. the cams to my guess will be around 350, but that is just a guess. i am very pleased with the cams though cause the more races i win the happier i get. i can say that the cam is a mild one with no outrageous lift or duration specs but it sounds cool at idle