I'm currently running a 221/221 cam in my car and I'm thinking of getting a bigger one. I'm just curious what you guys are running in yours. I'm looking for something that's street friendly with a good mid range powerband.

 

Well street friendly is different person to person. My car has a 230/236 on a 112 LSA and I think its street friendly.

Is this your DD, nice day car, wifes car, ect ?

 

I had a similar combo to what you've got now. A mild heads and cam setup built on 2002/2003 thinking. Ported stock 241s, a 221/221 .540 lift cam, LS6 intake, headers, etc backed by a 3600 stall TC and 4.10s. It ran well, but I wanted more.

I went with a newer CNC cylinder head and a 239/242 cam with a bigger converter and 3.73 gears. WOW! What a difference. More midrange torque at all throttle angles, and the additional pull past 5000 was incredible.

I will NEVER go back to the small cam way of thinking.

What you can go with will depend upon your current heads. What do you have (head, milling, valves, gaskets)? You're going to need a different converter too. 2800 is too mild even for what you've got now.

 

My first cam was a Texas Speed Torquer V.3 Camshaft 231/234 which i purchased with my heads, i wasn't too happy with the power i put down (430rwhp). I switched over to a TSP Magic Stick V.3 237/242, upgraded injectors and haven't looked back since, i put down a little over 450rwhp on a very conservative tune, at one point we had it up to 470rwhp. As far as drivability is concerned, this isn't too bad of a cam at all, although you will need some valvetrain upgrades for a cam that large. I'm also running a Yank SS3600 converter, i wish i had a 4000 instead.

 

Whose cam is that?

 

I'm thinking about a cam and want to know a couple things from you guys. What heads are you running?
How often do you drive your car?
How is the idle quality? meaning smooth, jerky wants to stall etc.

 

I'm running the 5.3L 2.5 stage heads which i purchased from texas speed. Idle quality is perfect with my cam, i drive my car every chance i get. I take it to work quite often which is about a 30 minute drive and most of the times it's a lot of stop and ago traffic and i never had an issue. The interior of the car doesn't shake too much, i upgraded to poly motor mounts and it's helped out a whole lot. Here's a video of my car at idle:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3SGsCt7Wpfk

And here's me driving:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=52hIKyotWcA

 

How many of you that changed to those big cams had to change your pistons as well?

 

It's a Texas Speed & Performance based grind. MS4 lobes on a tighter LSA.

I had some stage 2+ 241s hand ported by Craig at GTP. Now I've got stage 2.5 862 heads, CNC ported by PRC and milled down to 59cc. I drive it 5000-6000 miles per year. Some weeks it's driven every day, other times only on the weekends. It idles like a big cam should. Idle speed is 950, and 900 in gear. It does not stall, but has a little surge. It's certainly not smooth like stock, but it's no worse than the small 221 cam I had.

No. Heads milled .030" 59cc, running a .040" gasket for a ~11.7:1 compression ratio with the 1cc valve reliefs I cut into the stock pistons.