I believe it too, which is why my new cam is considerably smaller than the first grind. The car is likely going to be as fast or faster than it was, and hopefully have the durability & longevity your engine has.

 

It is possible to get a lot more from an LT1 without ever removng the heads, by just changing the valvetrain with the following considerations:

1) You'll need supporting mods like headers, free flowing exhaust, retuning and perhaps even different injectors, and a gear that will let you rev.

2) To get more torque and power from say 3500-6500 you'll have to sacrifice some below 3500, where you probably do much of your driving. You might want to limit revs to around 6500 on the stock shortblock.

3) Valve motion will be a lot more aggressive so you'll need better lifters, pushrods, rockers, springs, and retainers. This is over a grand in parts to accomplish this. If you didn't get all the right parts it won't work, nor will it work very long.

4) What could you expect for power increases? Perhaps 40-50 hp at peak and as much as 80 hp @ 64-6500. That's only going to help if you run the engine up there.

5) Here's an SAE Dynojet comparison of just what I've described. It's nearly 3 years old now, so there's probably a little more to be had today. Not everyone will believe this, but that's ok. You have to dot all the "i's" and cross all the "t's". IOW, you have to do everything right.

http://www.jonaadland.com/NewPics3/Camdynocomp6400.JPG

6) Would I advise you to spend well over $1000 plus installation/tuning/headers, etc. this way? Not really. I'd do the headers/exhaust, etc which you'll need anyway when you can do a head/cam package in the future and get more increase.

FWIW, I don't think this cam was all that "nasty". Rather it was pretty much what the engine needed to get where the owner wanted to go. Bigger ain't always better.

My $.02

 

Im running the LE2 cam on stock heads, but on a built bottom end. It pulls really hard all the way to 6200 RPM and the rev limiter is set to 6400rpm. I have no problems with it, but really good tuning is a must. I still need some bigger injectors(im on stock 19#'s), and maybe a fuel pump along with a dyno tune. It trapped 109 on 7 cylinders and a slipping trans shifting at 4k rpm, so im confident it will go high 11's@114mph+.

Best thing to do is talk to the cam grinder and go through the car's setup and individual goals for the car(DD, street/strip, max effort race car).

Id take OldSStroker's advice, cuz he hit it right on the nail. everyone has some good feedback as well.

 

And the winner is........CC306!

I would like to thank all the guys who helped me make an informed decision about camming my Z28. I'm sure I will have plenty more questions for you experts as I accumulate the needed parts.

 

well tuning is the key....i'm sure you will like it

 

Just make sure to use enough converter and gear to make it work. I had the 503 with 1.6's and used a 3800 Edge converter with a 4.56 gear and 28 inch tall tires. After some suspension work, I was running 11.70's @ 113 with 1.52 60 ft. times. I whipped on 306 guys all the time because they didn't use a combo that matched the higher powerband.

 

Better have at least a quality 3600 converter and a set of 3.73 gears to go with that choice of cam.