I picked up an LT1 cam a long time ago, and only just now have my engine out of the car , cleaning it up.. should I bother installing the LT1 cam if I dont know how to tune yet?
I experimented last year tuning, but the chips we had (2 whole chips, hard to find...) mightve been broken, or possibly the wrong ones, nothing seemed to work like it was supposed to.
I understood some of the concept of how to tune but wasnt having much luck with the burner I think, so either way ive not had much experience..
I dont want to bother swapping it in if theres not a base out there I can work from or something, ive seen the quote "undriveable mess" for lt1 cam without a tune, so I probably wont have much luck working from there

 

well...the main problem with that cam is that your valvesprings can't handle the extra lift of either cam, the lt4 cam being the obvious bigger problem of the two, and that's where your biggest problems will come from.

you COULD get it to run relatively well without prom tuning probably, but you'd absolutely have to get a vafpr, and a new fuel pump, or new injectors. you'd need quite a bit more fuel than the injectors/psi can handle. you'd have to run at ~22-23 psi on the stock injectors to make the fuel needed to handle it.

you'd also want to be ready to play around with your timing a bit.

but, I believe it's possible. it wouldn't run perfect, and it'd probably run a little rich(not too much really), it certainly wouldn't have the same power that it would if you tuned it, but you could probably get away with tossing it in(provided you changed valvesprings and the pump, and got a vafpr) and ran it while you were waiting for tuning equipment.

i did a little test run on dyno2003 with a stock setup and that cam(the program btw assumes you have enough fuel going into the motor) and it's predicting 240ish hp out of a completely stock motor with that cam. take it with a grain of salt of course, but it'd be awesome to setup and see what it can do.

 

Don't even bother. I have tried, for novelty sake, to run two different LT1 grinds (f-body and B-body) LT1 cams on the stock prom. No matter what I did to the timing and or fuel pressure (I was using a 454 VAFPR) the car ran like death and would barely get out of its own weight. My combo at the time was much like the one you suggest (Edelbrock TBI intake, TBI mods, VAFPR, headers, 3" exhaust, Walbro fuel pump). The stock tune can barely compensate for a cat-back and open element no less headers and a cam. The money you would need to spend on a timing chain and valve springs for any cam swap should be spent on DIY PROM burning tools. You will thank yourself later when your 220hp tuned combo runs 10000000 times better and faster than your nightmare "theoretical" 300HP untuned L03.

 

hey now, i said 240