The search is down on my end, so ill just ask. Im just thinking about buying a different cam, and i know allot of tuning and such is needed. My car is a stock LB9 with a t-5, around 70,000 miles. What is a decent upgrade over stock? There is a LT4 hotcam for sale here, but i have NO CLUE on what the specs mean. So what have you guys put in your 305s? Also you moderators are very smart on this, so please chime in.

My car will never see a strip, but i like kicking it in gear once in a while lol.

 

The LT4 hotcam:
@0.050 cam lift 210° 228° or 218 / 228
Valve Lift @ 1.5 ratio 0.492” 0.492”
Lobe Separation 112°
_____________________________

standard ZZ4 cam w/1.5 ratio .474 / .510
208 / 221
______________________________

Lingenfelter 74216
Part Number: L210025087
213/219
.493/.502 112
__________________________

Any of the three would work well for you, but all require different springs and retainers to handle the lift. Springs and retainers can be changed without pulling the heads.
Any camshaft change will benefit from custom tuning after the swap.

 

Will any of these have too much of a lift and make it kinda boggy at low rpm? Im going to have to research cams and what all the numbers mean lol.

 

All three of those cams have too much lift for stock heads. My advise is don't bother doing a Cam Swap without a Head Swap.

If you still want to do something, get a Full Exhaust and 1.52 Roller Tip Rockers, maybe go to a 3.42 gear set as well. If you want to spend a lot of cash, look at my sig and do everything that I have.

Be warned, it's a lot of work to change a Cam and then fit Headers.

 

No, the lift doesn't do that at all. Excessive intake duration and/or valve overlap will do that.

The last cam was specifically designed to work with a stock TPI system.

 

What do you mean by its alot of work to fit headers?

As of now i have junky manifolds and crushed y pipe, will be running a highflow or no cat, and i have a magnaflow 3" cat back. I just pmed a guy about headman headers and matching y. I also have 3.08s but will swap to 3.23 or 3.42 with discs. A guy also has 113 alluminum heads for sale, hmm...
I hear the lt4 hotcam and 113 alluminum heads work really well together, oh its so tempting!

 

In regard to Cam lift: The common belief is that stock heads will support a Cam lift of .480 max. (without using offset Valve locks).

The real issue is that your Stock Heads don't flow well enough to allow a better Cam to do it's job well, so using them is much less than optimal. The cost of doing a full rebuild of a set of Stock Heads (for a Cam swap) is almost as much as buying New better flowing Heads. I hear that the 113 Heads are nice. Also Trick Flow makes a nice Head for a 305, but I'd bet the EGR passage is not there on either of those Heads. Maybe that's not an issue for you. I live in California and being smog legal is a big deal here.

I recently went through the process of "Fitting" Headers. I found that if you want to keep the Air Conditioning (on MY car) you have cut, grind, and shim the brackets to clear the Headers. Also you have to cut the bracket for the Fuel Lines. Also you have to buy the shortest Spark Plugs that you can find. Also routing the wires and hoses so that they don't melt is an issue. All of this can be done, but don't expect Headers to just bolt on and fit well, it takes time to do a good job. My car is an 87, yours being an 89 may be easier to fit, and maybe you don't need smog legal Headers, which may make Fitting easier as well.

The basic deal with Cams is: Lift helps Low end, Duration helps high end. To a point... TPI does not like lots of Duration, and a 305 wants Less Duration than a 350 does. If I had to pick from the three Cams listed... I'd pick the Lingenfelter.

 

Yes, it has one: http://www.trickflow.com/partdetail....6&autoview=sku