Custom Grind or Off the Shelf

[LowDeck451]

At 9.7 scr with the restrictive manifolds the engine likely has enough compression and residual heat for preignition to eliminate tons of the streetable pump gas shelf cams. I agree there are some shelf cams that would work fine in here though.

That Crower cam that was posted appears to me to be a mopar specific .904” lifter cam. I assume it is symmetric like a lot of there flat tappet cams, that style cam seems to like a little wider lsa compared to one of Brookshire’s cams. I think it would work ok, I kind of like a size bigger cam and use a Brookshire cam though, a fender length for a win is still a win .

A big consideration and something I’m sure I don’t want or need is a super fast rate or hard on the valve train type of lobe. Street/Strip in my case means 90 min. round trip to the track. I mentioned this to Jim, he said his cam would be easy on the stock valvetrain. Can’t say I’ve heard of Brookshire cams. Thanks
Edit: Ok, I looked up Harold Brookshire - Ultradyne, Bullet, Lunati Voodoo

 

[LowDeck451]

I've used the Howards 224-234 112 lsa with very good results, You would be very happy with it. Makes good vacum great midrange as well. Compared to the 200 226 voodoo, the howards is better

That cam has .518/.543 lift, right? I think that’s too much for my stock valvetrain. Thanks though.

 

[BSB67]

My comment was not to you. Asking questions is good. Getting opinions is good. The smarter you are, the better your selection will be. Some just get way sideways in unimportant stuff for the average guy looking for a good cam to meet his needs.

IMO, most cams recommended by other posters on this thread are all pretty good based on what I think you have and want. But at the end of the day a "good" cam, or "right" cam or "best" cam will be solely based on your opinion and expectations. A cam effects every measure of how a car/engine runs. Idle quality, off idle acceleration, throttle response, fuel economy, peak power, peak rpm, power under the curve......These items compete with each other. At the end of the day, only you can judge the balance of these factors. And it falls on you to be very articulate and specific on these. And to further complicate it, words have different meanings to different people. There is a thread doing on now that has probably 15 people loving the 509 cam and calling it a great street cam. For me, there are 100 cams I'd pick before the 509 for what I like in a street car. And, I think this is why you got such different cam recommendations from the professionals. They probably heard or felt something different regarding your overall goals, or the same word might be interpreted a little different.

The more clear and specific you are on exactly what you have, and exactly what your goal is, the cam recommendations will get closer together, and then it will come down to you picking one. And if power is really important to you, take a hand full of tools with you to the track 3 times, and if you're a reasonable tuner, you'll find at least 20 hp.

 

[wyrmrider]

Jones cam is small as he has no mopar hft lobes except his best in class 256 lobe
that said he most likely nailed the seat timing - which is low end and picked for the cr
so I took his seats info and found the Howard I posted to get the most .200 duration for power
If that one has too much lift?
what do you mean by stock valvetrain? rockers? ok
you could use the Lunati I mentioned
or ask howards what the delta woud be to substitute a different exhaust lobe with about 272 duration
digression
Crower 271 is a Mopar lobe but not radical never had any problems forgot it was a compupro
the short crowers are expensive white box cams

 

[LowDeck451]

My comment was not to you. Asking questions is good. Getting opinions is good. The smarter you are, the better your selection will be. Some just get way sideways in unimportant stuff for the average guy looking for a good cam to meet his needs.

IMO, most cams recommended by other posters on this thread are all pretty good based on what I think you have and want. But at the end of the day a "good" cam, or "right" cam or "best" cam will be solely based on your opinion and expectations. A cam effects every measure of how a car/engine runs. Idle quality, off idle acceleration, throttle response, fuel economy, peak power, peak rpm, power under the curve......These items compete with each other. At the end of the day, only you can judge the balance of these factors. And it falls on you to be very articulate and specific on these. And to further complicate it, words have different meanings to different people. There is a thread doing on now that has probably 15 people loving the 509 cam and calling it a great street cam. For me, there are 100 cams I'd pick before the 509 for what I like in a street car. And, I think this is why you got such different cam recommendations from the professionals. They probably heard or felt something different regarding your overall goals, or the same word might be interpreted a little different.

The more clear and specific you are on exactly what you have, and exactly what your goal is, the cam recommendations will get closer together, and then it will come down to you picking one. And if power is really important to you, take a hand full of tools with you to the track 3 times, and if you're a reasonable tuner, you'll find at least 20 hp.

Yeah, makes sense, Jim is the only one I’ve spoken to, the other two were spec sheets. Hoping to hear back from him today.

 

[LowDeck451]

Jones cam is small as he has no mopar hft lobes except his best in class 256 lobe
that said he most likely nailed the seat timing - which is low end and picked for the cr
so I took his seats info and found the Howard I posted to get the most .200 duration for power
If that one has too much lift?
what do you mean by stock valvetrain? rockers? ok
you could use the Lunati I mentioned
or ask howards what the delta woud be to substitute a different exhaust lobe with about 272 duration
digression
Crower 271 is a Mopar lobe but not radical never had any problems forgot it was a compupro
the short crowers are expensive white box cams

Yeah stock rockers. Do you mean the Crower 271 is an expensive white box cam?

 

[wyrmrider]

ABSOLUTELY NOT
you can spot the white box cams 204-214 Torque beast pg 95 --214-224 Power Beast etc
We have an excellent Crower member who hangs out at FABO PM Dart19666 name is Shaun he gives good guy prices to members if you need any Crower parts
like the lube saver lifters (or from Rhodes)
I do see the 271 HDP and the lift is stock rocker friendly but it's bigger than what Jones recommended I think it likes 10+:1

nothing wrong with stock rockers in the .525 lift area, of course not banzi spring pressure, we had to run them in stock classes
I like oil through the pushrods pushrods to help the cups live and on high lift cams I usually run a lash cap correts the geometry and spreads the lobe out

What did Jim at racer Brown Say?


I'm going to xreference the lobes on the bullet suggestion
you need to know how do do this yourself
(same way I added the seat duration to the Jones suggestion)

Looks like the Lunati 702 (or 3 ) are in your lift range unless howard would do a custom for the priice of a catalog grind

 

[wyrmrider]

http://www.bulletcams.com/Masters/HClobes.htm

dur/lift dur ,050 .200 lobe
HC273/330 273 220 137 .3300 .000 CTA torque asymetrical

HC275/350 275 231 149 .3500 .000 CRS symetrical
HC282/335 282 234 149 .3350 .000 CRS

These are Bullet lobes It does not appear that UDHarold did any .904 masters at Ultradyne
The Lunati Voodoo are later than his Ultradyne lobes

 

[LowDeck451]

http://www.bulletcams.com/Masters/HClobes.htm

dur/lift dur ,050 .200 lobe
HC273/330 273 220 137 .3300 .000 CTA torque asymetrical

HC275/350 275 231 149 .3500 .000 CRS symetrical
HC282/335 282 234 149 .3350 .000 CRS

These are Bullet lobes It does not appear that UDHarold did any .904 masters at Ultradyne
The Lunati Voodoo are later than his Ultradyne lobes

Thanks for trying to help, but looking at the lobe list is beyond my talent, even if I could find the lobes, which I couldn’t...
CRB-3? 282H?...Not HC? Anyway, appreciate you trying to help.
Didn’t hear from Jim today, maybe Monday or I’ll give him a call. He did say he was swamped lately. Thanks.

 

[1wild&crazyguy]

Custom cam is most always a better choice.

 

[wyrmrider]

yes but a lot more coin

i'll walk you through it
HC hyd chrysler the lobes for .903 lifters
282 is the duration @.006
then the lift
then the details
only really new information is the duration at .200
which is an indicator of power
he .006 wants to be as much as you can run at your compression to maximise dynamic compression and thus torque up to 3000 or so

 

[wyrmrider]

Let me get this straight
is this a street car which is occasionally driven to the strip in which case we do care about driveability and 3000 do care torque
or a strip car that is driven to the strip - in which case we do not care about 3000 rpm torque

Eventually it's going to be your decision so a little more insight
and you have some constraints with the head choice, stock exhaust, and rockers
but lots of motors built that way before the trick stuff was available
The head will not flow enough to need a high lift cam and the rockers would not like it anyway
and the stock exhaust does not like a bunch of overlap
so I'm trying to hold the seat duration and overlap down while keeping the duration at .200 up

go to
https://cranecams.com.au/pdfs/CraneCamsCamLobeProfileCatalog.pdf
and go to page 9 note the headings on the columns
here Crane shows their three series of MOPAR cams (a lot in the catalog are chevy profiles)
here it is easy to see which are the endurance/ street grinds and which are more radical
not so easy with Bullet et all (at least Howard flags and Voodoo is a given)
The HC904 series-- note the seat durations @.009 are high even higher than MP and Engle or Racer Brown
here the 260 would be closer to Jones recommended 264 @.006 and I'm thinking he was thinking of a Street/ Strip usage where bullet was Strip/street
The H@ Series are at .004 so you have to add 7-8 degrees duration to match .006
the 274-276 would be closer to Jones 264 @.006 recommendation
once you get to Crane's catalog it's harder to figure which lobe series the cams come from but I'm sure they have some MOPAR lobes that work with stock rockers
https://cranecams.com/crane-cams-catalog

Then there is Engle who also has 3 flavors of Mopar Hyd cam these would work with stock rockers
examples @.008 .050 .200 lobe w/1.5 rocker
K-54HYD 260° 214° 127° .313" .470" (more seat than a 264 @.006)
K-56HYD 268° 224° 140° .336" .504"
K-58HYD 276° 230° 148° .343" .514"

Engle used to grind cams for Hughes and they know BBM

 

[HEMI-ITIS]

I run a Dwayne Porter custom grind solid flat tappet cam in my 63 and I love it. Ron

Dwayne has built or spec'd out many factory appearing cars with modified and stock configurations.If it were me I would talk to him,he is a member here. If your not sure,just google him!

 

[LowDeck451]

Let me get this straight
is this a street car which is occasionally driven to the strip in which case we do care about driveability and 3000 do care torque
or a strip car that is driven to the strip - in which case we do not care about 3000 rpm torque

Eventually it's going to be your decision so a little more insight
and you have some constraints with the head choice, stock exhaust, and rockers
but lots of motors built that way before the trick stuff was available
The head will not flow enough to need a high lift cam and the rockers would not like it anyway
and the stock exhaust does not like a bunch of overlap
so I'm trying to hold the seat duration and overlap down while keeping the duration at .200 up

go to
https://cranecams.com.au/pdfs/CraneCamsCamLobeProfileCatalog.pdf
and go to page 9 note the headings on the columns
here Crane shows their three series of MOPAR cams (a lot in the catalog are chevy profiles)
here it is easy to see which are the endurance/ street grinds and which are more radical
not so easy with Bullet et all (at least Howard flags and Voodoo is a given)
The HC904 series-- note the seat durations @.009 are high even higher than MP and Engle or Racer Brown
here the 260 would be closer to Jones recommended 264 @.006 and I'm thinking he was thinking of a Street/ Strip usage where bullet was Strip/street
The H@ Series are at .004 so you have to add 7-8 degrees duration to match .006
the 274-276 would be closer to Jones 264 @.006 recommendation
once you get to Crane's catalog it's harder to figure which lobe series the cams come from but I'm sure they have some MOPAR lobes that work with stock rockers
https://cranecams.com/crane-cams-catalog

Then there is Engle who also has 3 flavors of Mopar Hyd cam these would work with stock rockers
examples @.008 .050 .200 lobe w/1.5 rocker
K-54HYD 260° 214° 127° .313" .470" (more seat than a 264 @.006)
K-56HYD 268° 224° 140° .336" .504"
K-58HYD 276° 230° 148° .343" .514"

Engle used to grind cams for Hughes and they know BBM

Street car. I live 45 min. from the track so spending awhile on the highway at 55 or 60 mph. The parts I’m not willing to change, at least not for a while are the 3.55s, the manifolds and the heads. A stock looking car that runs quite a bit better than stock is what I’m after. Lol I appreciate your confidence in me to be able to pick my own lobes but I’m just not there yet. Thanks.

 

[LowDeck451]

Custom cam is most always a better choice.

Custom cam is most always a better choice.

Hope so!

 

[LowDeck451]

Dwayne has built or spec'd out many factory appearing cars with modified and stock configurations.If it were me I would talk to him,he is a member here. If your not sure,just google him!

Sure, I’ve seen many of his comments. I’ll look into that. Thanks

 

[Dodge Bros]

The Bullet cam Tim selected is likely a torque profile for a .842” lifter (CTA). Next time I talk to them I will ask what that profile is. It is not one i have used.

I would be interesting to see what R Brown has in mind.

I ran some dyno sims and looked for some trends. The Jones cam tq was in at 2500 and hp peaked at 5000. The Bullet cam gained about 30 hp and nosed over a little past 5500, it lost 20 lbs of tq to the Jones cam, pretty flat curve between 3000-3500. Which cam is better depends on what the goals are for the car. My last 383 had a mp 484 cam 284/284 108 lsa. Both those cams are small compared to it. Personally I would do the bigger cam.

There are two schools of thought for stock manifold combos. The narrower LSA with the bigger mid range power, or wider lsa with less overlap and open the exhuast earlier to try keep the top end hp. Bullet has done several cams like for us on 112-114 lsa’s for stock manifolds like that second method. The Jones and that 275 Bullet cam are the opposite of that. But our cams were for bigger cubic inch engine with high compression up past 10.

Another direction yet for flat tappet cams is the same or a little longer seat timings, bigger .050” specs and more lift with variable duration lifters pulling out the seat timing at the converter. Some builders claim that it is not needed with a fast rate cam is chosen correctly. The fast rate cams are known make a lot of valve terrain noise, so to me the variable duration lifters are not much different. Bullet has done several cams like that for us, using v max and v pro Rhoads lifters. One of my favorite street profiles with stock type rockers at Bullet is the .3334” lift hft Ultrdyne’s. (.5” lift with 1.5 rockers). Irc they have them in increments 2-3* steps from 232@ .050 to into 240s. They are not designed for a .904” lifter, but IMO they do pretty well against a full blooded mopar design.

 

[Aeronet]

3.55s are for a strip/street car around here. If you do any highway driving you will find that you are the slowest car on the road with those gears, unless you want to cruise in the 3 to 4 thousand, and maybe into the 5 grand RPM range.

 

[LowDeck451]

The Bullet cam Tim selected is likely a torque profile for a .842” lifter (CTA). Next time I talk to them I will ask what that profile is. It is not one i have used.

I would be interesting to see what R Brown has in mind.

I ran some dyno sims and looked for some trends. The Jones cam tq was in at 2500 and hp peaked at 5000. The Bullet cam gained about 30 hp and nosed over a little past 5500, it lost 20 lbs of tq to the Jones cam, pretty flat curve between 3000-3500. Which cam is better depends on what the goals are for the car. My last 383 had a mp 484 cam 284/284 108 lsa. Both those cams are small compared to it. Personally I would do the bigger cam.

There are two schools of thought for stock manifold combos. The narrower LSA with the bigger mid range power, or wider lsa with less overlap and open the exhuast earlier to try keep the top end hp. Bullet has done several cams like for us on 112-114 lsa’s for stock manifolds like that second method. The Jones and that 275 Bullet cam are the opposite of that. But our cams were for bigger cubic inch engine with high compression up past 10.

Another direction yet for flat tappet cams is the same or a little longer seat timings, bigger .050” specs and more lift with variable duration lifters pulling out the seat timing at the converter. Some builders claim that it is not needed with a fast rate cam is chosen correctly. The fast rate cams are known make a lot of valve terrain noise, so to me the variable duration lifters are not much different. Bullet has done several cams like that for us, using v max and v pro Rhoads lifters. One of my favorite street profiles with stock type rockers at Bullet is the .3334” lift hft Ultrdyne’s. (.5” lift with 1.5 rockers). Irc they have them in increments 2-3* steps from 232@ .050 to into 240s. They are not designed for a .904” lifter, but IMO they do pretty well against a full blooded mopar design.

Definitely don’t want to push it to the point of valvetrain noise. 9.7 comp. and 91 octane premium here. Just curious, how bad would the MP 280 .474 cam be? 230ish?, 110* 60* overlap.

 

[LowDeck451]

3.55s are for a strip/street car around here. If you do any highway driving you will find that you are the slowest car on the road with those gears, unless you want to cruise in the 3 to 4 thousand, and maybe into the 5 grand RPM range.

3.55s are for a strip/street car around here. If you do any highway driving you will find that you are the slowest car on the road with those gears, unless you want to cruise in the 3 to 4 thousand, and maybe into the 5 grand RPM range.

3.55s are for a strip/street car around here. If you do any highway driving you will find that you are the slowest car on the road with those gears, unless you want to cruise in the 3 to 4 thousand, and maybe into the 5 grand RPM range.

I went from 3.23 to 3.55 when I had my Charger. Quite a difference on the highway. Won’t bother me as much with this Barracuda, not an original ‘numbers’ car. There’s a big Street Car vs Strip Car debate going on over at FABO right now.