With all the cams I have seen on here and on craigslist, how much of a peformance increase could you see from just swapping your stock cam for an aftermarket performance cam? Do you have to switch lifters and rods along with it or could you just add the cam and get better performance?
96' LT1 Z28, all stock on engine.

 

I did the 503 cam , You would need with any cam upgrade springs upgrade , push rods ,guideplates may want to upgrade to 7/16 rocker studs? 3/8 or 7/16 Rockers lifters not so much thats more a personnel thing . If your a auto you should do a stall . Theres plenty of info out there if you look at the sticky and do searches thats the way i did mine

 

You will not get the full benefit of the cam without doing the bolt-ons first.

 

Rather than do a cam only upgrade, consider upgrading the rocker arms to 1.6:1. You will gain about .030 lift, more duration, less friction (and heat), and more accurate lift - it's a good upgrade and way easier.

 

I've been thinking about adding a cam - i do have full exhaust including headers.

What would a typical gain be with a cam and rocker arm upgrade?

 

Alrighty, since this was first posted I have added the Pacesetter long tubes, pacesetter off road y-pipe, 3200 stall tc, electric water pump and a tune. Love it so far. Now its time to get back to this cam idea. Seems I am leaning towards the cc306. 1.6rrs are being picked up thursday. looking at dual spring valve spring sets. Hard to find a full kit that has dual springs and all the locks and retainers. Lunati has a single that comes with all accesssories, think that is a spring that'll work with the 306?
Also, stick with the stock length pushrods(7.2) but in an after market version(hardened) think the trick flow ones have had decent reviews on here.

 

Hopefully in your research you've found that the CC306 is less than ideal with stock heads. There are cams with smaller lift/duration that will outperform the outdated 306 all day long. The most popular is the XE503, but I am partial to the AI 226/234. There are guys FLYING with that grind.

Might I recommend one of AI's cam kits? They come with one of their proven off-the-shelf grinds and ALL matching hardware. Eliminates the need to piece together everything which eliminates the risk of mismatching components.

If your heads have never been off then picking up the popular Trick Flow hardened pushrods in the stock length will be fine. If you are unsure though, it never hurts to measure the pushrods using a length checking tool.

Don't forget that you WILL need a retune once the cam swap is complete.