Ok l tore down the 327/350 l bought from skids. Looks wonderful! Amazing condition. Had one broken compression ring on 5, but no damage. The cylinder walls, stock measurement and absolutely no lip wear even. Little wear on crank, so gonna take it town 10 and new bearings (clevite). Cam is very useable, but am going to replace it. Hence, the post - looking for recommendations for a cam. LEt me give you the pertinent information. Rear end is 4:11 posi. Tranny is Muncie Rockcrusher 4 speed. Intake is a dual plane. Figuring a 550-650 cfm carb. Heads are 2.02 double humps. This is to be a driver, and want it to sound thumpy enough that you know it has been cammed and not too radical. Planning to run hydraulic lifters (will use new ones with cam). This has the stock cam and duration in it. Some have said about a 5;02 and less than 5:25 would be good but are not real experts. So, throwing it out to you - what recommendations do you have? TIA

 

Mods, maybe this should be moved to tech and performance and retitled Recommendations for a cam?

 

Andy! What'sup? What are the specs on the original cam for your engine? You could use that as a starting point. Some of the Cam manufacture's websites state the amount of "lope" for each of their cams (for us rookies).

 

Hey Tony! Good to hear from you. Been following along with your posts and been praying for you. Been working on the daughter's Monte Carlo, and is now ready to head to the exhaust shop to fab a few pieces, narrow them and reverse the mufflers (flowmasters that po put on backwards ). Got a new phone that doesn't want to upload photos, so l haven't posted here in forever. Hope to get that worked out in the near future, and give some updates. Spent a good bit of time on your thread tonight, cuz l am about to tear into a trailing arm for fresh grease and rust removal. Guess l will put in new main seals too even though Dad put new ones in. Had a book where engine is (central MO) that has original specs for the cam, but the paper l wrote them down on got lost. So l will have to research them out and go from there. Will get back going here directly, and will keep you posted. Take care my friend and keep on keeping on. Drop me a note anytime!

 

I would recommend contacting any of the cam manufacturers and get their recommendation. If you have a preferred manufacturer you can start there. I went with Comp Cams because they make it real easy to get a recommendation, and I have run their cams before. They have a simple form on their website that you can fill out, send it in and they will offer you their recommendation. There are a lot of factors that go into cam selection and they seem to cover them all in their form. Just for reference this is what I have.

355 sm blk
10.25:1 compression (calculated)
GM fast burn aluminum heads
GM dual plane intake
GM self aligning roller rockers
Holley Street Avenger carb - 670 cfm
5 speed
3:54 gear
Mostly street and highway driving.

They recommended the Xtreme Energy XE274H cam for my application. You can check out the specs here.

http://www.compcams.com/Company/CC/c...x?csid=87&sb=2

Their website has a lot of info, including sound bytes of their cams so you can listen to what they might sound like. I haven't actually run the engine yet as I am in the middle of the restoration, but it should give you some insight. Hope this helps!