Fully agreed, and agreeing so from years of experience. I feel like the goals are at odds. Chop cam / but good mpg and no required power gain? Anything done will be an upgrade in a sense from oem, so there will be more power. But a heavy choppa cam is going to typically nix mpg because they run a lot of positive overlap and lower lsa. I totally get cam selection based on sound. I've been there at least once. But if someone has never had a snotty cam and doesn't know the trade-offs in car character.... especially if NOT chasing power (?) .... I think they might not be happy with the car and how it drives if they go that route. I like snotty cars. I've got one across town right now about to be woken up. An absolute RIPPER the way I bought it. But I'm ordering a cam by end of the week I've specifically designed to be a smooth little grind.

Gears are fun. Cams are fun. Pipes are a must. Cost per power, I always aim folks to used blower kits. But in this case.... I think the best advice above (including your own) is to talk to the tuner because they can greatly control idle to give it that chopp sound or amplify it on whichever cam is selected.

I wonder if the itch might be scratched with a good "stage 1" something with long tubes and maybe add some cutouts. The Atak is already a solid good sounding set of pipes. It can be made to sound aggressive and not be trading a lot off.

OP: First cam swap?

 

It seems like a cam like the BTR Truck Norris, or Low buck truck cam will give you that lopey idle sound, and improve torque and HP across the curve over stock. Richard Holdener has lots of good dyno videos about this.

 

Texas Speed & Performance is great and the 220R sounds like what you're after.

https://www.texas-speed.com/cat/cams...s/ls1-ls2-ls6/

 

I have this one-
https://sdparts.com/i-24138755-sdpc-...6-0l-6-2l.html

Runs on cheap ls6 behive springs. Only upside in terms of power. pulls out to 6800 with a peak just after 6k. Light lope.

 

IMO a great street cam would be the comp cams 224/230 .575 lift. Slightly larger would be a cam motion titan 4, 228/232. These cams are probably perfect my car, my car is ready for this. I already have long tube headers, 3.73 gears, and a 3200stall.

Good luck, some people say go big or go home. Most people run there cars from 2,500 RPM to 5500 RPM. Stage 4 cam is great for drag racing, but not for daily driving. Just my .02

 

Those are great cams each. I'm in a similar ballpark for my 427 cam, but need to call Cam Motion today to see if they can cut it on a stock they already have. They've not gotten back to me in a week.