Hey guys. Im in the process of building up the longblock and about to stick the cam in and started thinking about cam timing. Would it be more benficial to install the cam retarded for optimal high rpm on boost, since hooking on the street is hard enough already, even with nitto dr's. I figure even though its mainly a street car, it had gobs of torque down low as a 355 and cc305 cam with 10 psi, and would fry tires unless I babied it off a light and then rolled into it. My experiences with NA cars would tell me to retard the timing and make more use of the powerband up higher once the car hooks. Does that still hold true for a boosted setup, and would that be a good idea for my 383? Im going with a larger cam around 230/236 with 26x flow heads and the same s-trim for now. Thoughts?

 

really? no one has any insight on this?

 

your thinking is correct, na and boosted engines react to cam timing the same way . a retarded camshaft will drop torque down low and pick up hp up top and vice versa. when i worked on fuel cars we ran the same cams as our teammates did on the dragsters. a flopper chassis couldnt handle the early torque of the digger with the same cam timing making it a nightmare to get off the line...this cam profile was named "the destroyer" with good reason. to combat this issue we retarded the camshafts 3 degrees from where the dragster shafts were running. it gave us just enough loss down low, opening up the tuning window, that we solved our starting line consistency issues almost immediately. now i dont have alot of LT or LS experience but i believe the shafts are doweled and you would have to use off set crank keys to achieve the desired result.

 

Well, ive gone double roller, so I could advance or retard if need be. Talked briefly to my shortblock builder and he said to leave it be to combat the low 9:1 compression ratio. My thing is, the cam has 4* advance ground into it. So straight up is already 4 advanced. So if I retard it 4* it will actually BE straight up. I dont know, I think im gonna leave it be, although I really want to install it with no advance at all. Its a 230/236 on a 114

 

with the 4 advance it will feel alot better while ur not under boost...which is 95 percent of the time....

 

I run mine straight up.

Rich