I am wondering what are the key things to look for when decideing on a cam for a car runnign 6 pounds of boost. I have a descent set of heads and intake, and I am wondering what would be a nice cam to run.

 

general opinion for low boost would be the stock cam, also low boost is considerd any thing less than 10 psi, serious cams may be worth while after 15psi, sometimes a radical cam actually may lose power in a boosted engine, any way I would stick with the stock cam until you get everything running right , and if you are like most people you wont settle for 6 psi of boost very long. thanks Ron

 

It's not really so much a cam issue as it is an exhaust flow issue, or rather; an intake/exhaust flow ratio.

With mechanical supercharging or nitrous oxide, you want the exhaust flow to be a higher percentage of the intake flow.

To pull numbers out of my @$$, strictly for the purpose of making it clear; you might want your exhaust flow to be 75% of intake on an NA engine, whereas a supercharged or nitroused engine would want 80%.

This can be done with heads, cam or both.

Of course, it's not all that simple, especially with an exhaust driven supercharger (turbo), but the basic concept is accurate.

You can ask your head vendor for a cam suggestion, or conversely; you can go to a custom grinder, tell him your engine spec and head flow and have him grind a match.

 

I went with a really conservative blower cam from Comp with 212/224 @ .050" 114 LSA and 487"/502" but used 1.6:1 RRs and AFR LT4 195cc heads and 6# Vortech and the car went 120.8 in the quarter (on 7 good pistons).

 

On a mildly boosted engine such as your I suggest camming it to maximize N/A power in your rpm range. In other words don't worry too much about the superchager and optimize your daily unboosted performance. While there can be some performance gained by tweaking the cam for supercharged use, such as longer exhaust timing, a 6 psi system won't be too taxed with a traditional cam. Consider a valvespring upgrade as the supecharger can extend your usable rpm range 500 rpm or better.