VetteFantasy

I'm having a blast with my childhood dream come true, a C5 project car, and I have a long list of mods to go. My wishlist has fallen together pretty easily, but I'm undecided about the cam upgrade. YouTube videos aren't really the best indicators of how a cam will change a car, so I'm hoping some of you may have some suggestions (spec, brand, or even exact cams that fit the bill) if you had similar goals.

My goals for a cam are, in this order: driveability, a nice lopey sound, and decent performance increase.

My overall goal for the car is to make it a nice touring car: decently quick (~450-500 rwhp), but easy/fun to drive around town, with lots of today's creature comforts and tech upgrades added. I don't care at all about street or track racing.

Performance mods so far include longtube headers, LS6 intake, and Z06 exhaust. Hopefully this year I'll be able to add ported LS6 heads, Halltech cold air intake, cam of choice, and also swap to a manual transmission.

Thanks in advance! I started lurking on C5 General when I was a kid and C5s were the latest and greatest, so the transition from painting scale models to working on a real one with my husband has been a pretty humbling experience.

dblerman

My advice, if you're looking for 450-500whp, skip the cam and go straight to a blower. You will end up spending WAY WAY WAY more on cam related stuff and still be nowhere near the power you'd make with a supercharger.

I probably have close to 6 grand in my heads/cam/headers/differential/torque converter swap and I'm not even at 450whp
If I could do it over again..........

Z06VENOM

450+ is not easy with the little 5.7...
A big cam and good heads will get you there but drivability and TQ will suffer.

I got 435whp out of mine without going too big...
Self ported 243 heads (swirl ramps removed, rocker hump removed and a good clean up around the seats) milled .015

Cam: Comp Cam LXL lobe 230/234 LSA112 ICL 110. Vey happy with this cam, good TQ and easy on the valve train. This cam on a LSA114 would be near perfect for the street imho

VetteFantasy

Thanks, guys. I really appreciate the advice! A blower had been on my long-term list, so maybe it would make sense to move it up. I'll be sure to check out that Comp Cam, too. Thanks for posting all the specs.

RonSSNova

I agree. You can actually get to 450+ even with a relatively small cam, less than 230 intake duration. But, everything else needs to be spot on and optimized.
Also, remember that an auto will suck up more power than a stick.
Auto to stick conversion isn't trivial BTW.