I need you guys to reccomend a good cam for a 305 in my IROC. The motor is an 86 LB9(flat tappet). I will be using a non-CC Quadrajet, Stealth intake, Hooker shorties, 3" exhaust. unfortunately, Im stuck with 2.73s and a stock converter for the time being, so keep that in mind. im looking for a cam with a bit of attitude, but mellow enough to drive everyday. Thanks.

 

I would recommend not doing anything until you can do the whole thing. A miss-matched cam, intake, converter, and gears will be a total pain to drive.

For what it's worth, mine is the biggest/baddest computer flat-tappet cam Crane offers. It's awesome. I do drive it daily, even at zero degrees and in the snow (like this morning). Idles at 500 RPM in D. But, I've retained the CC carb, so not sure how it would act w/non-CC.

 

The "Summit TPI" cam would work pretty well I would think. 204/214 @.050, lift of like .42x/.44x. It's like $100 I believe. Very close to the Crane CompuCam 2030 btw. I was running a virtually identical cam in my 86 IROC's 305 TPI (204/214, .420/.442) and it worked well with the car. I did have 3.42s but I think it would work with the 2.73s and stock converter just fine. That cam definitely wakes the car up over the wimpy peanut cam, it's pretty close just slightly hotter than the factory 5spd cam's specs... If you had better gears (and maybe anyway) I would think just slightly bigger would be optimal, like around 210/220 .440/.460ish would be about perfect... How that would run with the stock gears/tc I don't know though... You could always go with the conservative cam to start with, and do a in-car cam swap after you get the gears/tc taken care of.

 

Actually, i found someone selling a 3.27 p-bolt, so the rear situation is improved slightly.

i think Im gonna go with that Summit cam set, to keep the motor low-buck, since the 305 is just to hold me over til i can build a nice 355.