i have a fairly stock 305. i have an edelbrock performer intake manifold, edelbrock 600 cfm carb, dynomax cat-back with no cat, removed a/c and the air pump is coming out. i want a new cam and some headers. i have around 550 $$$ to spend . i want to keep my gas mileage. i'm only 17 and work at jewel. lol. thanks for any suggestions would be greatly appreciated

 

my 305 has hooker headers on it and they work very well i think even tho i bought my car with them on it so i dont realy have a comparasin.

 

Flowtech headers.

Comp cams XE250H.

 

SLP headers are nice, I have a pair of those. I also have a Flowmaster cat-back...with high flow cat. Trust me it sounds sick as hell. Go with the SLP headers. It's well spend money.

 

I don't know much about headers, but I sure wouldn't use the above suggested Comp cams XE250H.

That cam has a 110 deg. lsa, it's lift numbers are low 432/444, and it's duration numbers are short 206/212.

Why in the world would anyone want to install that cam?

 

after headers and a y-pipe, you may have almost spent your $550. Budget $150 for some uncoated hedman 16470's or something, and $100 for the y-pipe. If you're lucky, you can put 'em in yourself, and not have any problems. ok, $300 or so spent. If you are unlucky, and need other exhaust work done at a shop to fit 'em in, then you get to that $550 rather quickly.

The cam with lifters will set you back another $200 or so, throw in some gaskets, timing chain, fluids, and you're out a cool $250-$300 for the cam.

The 250H is far better than the stock cam, but that's not saying a lot. I was thinking the 256, or 262...

 

Both the 256 and 262 look like good choices to me.