I have been disassmbling my 350 and purchasing some ugrade parts for it. The cam I bought is a comp cam 268 extreme. A couple of friends of mine think that its to conserative. I want this engine a about 9.5 to 1 an avoid vacuum problems. I would like a little lope. I have two different sets of fuelie heads and an edlbrock intake and carb on the way. The rear is only 3:08s but I'm working on another. The exhaust still uses cast iron up front but the pipes have been change to LT-1 type with a Walker turbos. I thought that that cam was about two small steps the up side of stock.

You could go with a .272 cam and get a little more out of it. Anything after that would require a stall convertor. I would recommend an exhaust manifold change to make the most out of it, headers would make a bit of difference.

with that rear gear you will need to stay with a smaller lift cam to keep the torque in the lower RPM range

|UPDATED|11/30/2002 11:38:31 AM|/UPDATED|

with the installation of headers you will lose low end torquue and gain high rpm housepower.

Thanks as always your input is appreciated. I'm measuring the motor to see if any corrective machine work is needed. I still can see honing patterns. I've got to see about getting my back up rear end with 3:73s ready. Just need to watch which way I throw the money so I could complete each project as I go. The head prep could get expensive.

XE268 is a good cam, but if you go to the Comp Cams website they made more power and torque with the XE262 cam in a 9.5:1 motor, and with better vacuum.

personaly i like building an engine for maximum torque. that give you the most power from 0 to 4000 rpm and thats where my engine runs most of the time. building for horsepower will change the power range up to 2000-6000 which will require the gear change to get your engine to run at this rpm range. you still will be down on power from a dead stop. gas mileage will suffer also. high torque motors pull high vacuum, get good mileage, and will tear up great 0 to 40 mph times. great for stoplights. headers will also change the rpm range your engine will need to run for max power. the larger the diameter of the header the higher the rpm band will be with a matching loss of torque. well thats my 2 cents.

Here's the Comp Cams XE cam comparison dyno results:
www.compcams.com/information/Products/Camshafts/DynoSheets/
Joe

|UPDATED|1/10/2003 8:24:08 PM|/UPDATED|