Ok I was talking to a guy who knows his stuff and he told me that the best cam for my car would be one with a 0.050 duration in the upper 240's on the intake side

Ok so which numbers will I be looking for when I pick a cam, I dont know where duration and the intake side would be

or does he mean find a cam with upper 240's at .050 Duration?

 

yes.. upper 240's @ .050.. but thats alot of duration for a stock motor.. for a mild motor, its a good amount..

you wont find alot of cams with advertised duration in the upper 240's.. its near stock.. maybe just a tad more..

what is your motor combo?

 

its a stock shortblock 350 with dart 180, 64 iron eagles, rpm air gap intake, this summer im going to add a 750dp and longtubes hopefully along with the cam

will i need to upgrade springs for a cam this big?

 

Then that cam will be far too big for your cylinder heads. You'd need a lot of compression to use a cam that big. Look up the specs at summit, for a compxe294he or thereabouts. Look at the recommended RPM range and recommended converter stall speed. you'd need to make a lot of changes.
your guy doesn't know his stuff.

 

i dont wanna argue with you...but im pretty sure he does...plus i plan on going with a 3k converter and the cam you said has 9.5 to 1 compression which is probably close to what i have and the car is already geared

 

ok, on a chev 350, with, lets say a 248* cam (straight duration).
You'd get best results with
10-10.5:1 compression, at least.
4000RPM stall.
4.10 gears
200cc intake ports on the heads, or at least 250cfm at .500" lift on the intake side.

You're much smaller than all of those criteria. I think you'd be happier with a mid 230's max. A compxe274he is just about right, maybe a smidge too big even.


A 248* duration cam would be really lazy down low, and would really wake up over 3500RPM or so. Unfortunately over 5000RPM your heads will start to choke out, etc etc. You'll end up with a short powerband. You'll need lots of gearing/stall converter to get the car going to make up for the soft bottom end.
It's a recipe for a soggy car, with a narrow powerband. That's just my opinion, but hey, i'm using a 240* cam with ported 305 heads so....

 

i ran a 294S cam with a 10.5:1, 383 using ported camel back heads.. and an 800cfm carb.. car was a beast down low but hit a wall at 5700rpm.. literally felt like i was letting off.. it made absolutely no power past 6000.. heads were probably around 165-175cc



294S:
solid flat tappet
294/294 advertised
248/248 @ .050
.525/.525 lift
110 LSA

 

I was hoping you'd give some insight 5678, I remembered you had that cam before.

Yep, 383 cubes eats it up and lowers your powerband, and the compression helps with that too (low end grunt). The teeny heads must have run out of steam though due to the small chambers.
Does make for good torque though eh? Lots of velocity in those runners.
That's about what i'm hoping for with my combo coming up.