Jure Urbancic's VolvoPAGE - Bill Garland's Nuclear Engineering Page

K and H cam
K-grind and H-grind camshaft
Two hot cams were manufactured by Volvo in late 70s and early 80s. H grind ('79 - ) was
the first in row for "new" line of OHC engines, started in autumn '74; B21. First
candidate for H was certainly the famous GT (242 GT). B23 (first introduced in GT) E
(high compression and FI) developed nice number of 140 hp. H cam has 272 degrees
duration and 12 mm lift, for good filling at high engine speeds.
It wasn't so good down there, up to about 2000 RPM; 2,300 ccm engine cured at least
half of that. Remember that most 240s of the era were equipped with 2,1 litre engines.
But later the engineers decided that peak power is not all they want and reduced it to 136
hp (certain markets got only 136hp version, other only 140hp, some mixture of both...
242GT, on the other hand K cam was standard for all post '81 B23E engines) with a K
grind cam. This one has duration reduced to 252 degrees and lift to 11.95 mm; but
was still quite hot comparing to other cams available in B21/23 family. Lower engine
speed operation is improved but still offers a lot of power up there and not that much of
torque down under. K cam was also called GT cam in 300 series; 343 GLS RS
I may say that both hot cakes fit any B21/23/230 engine and may cause problems when
emission tests begin. Both encourage the engine to emit high HC levels when idle.
Certainly H even more so.
Made by Jure Urbancic, July 1996
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http://www2.mf.uni-lj.si/~jurbancic/cam.htm [12/25/2001 11:16:56 PM]