Yeah, I'm afraid you are going to have to eat those words (as Josh-'97 WS6 pointed out) . As a single example: the stock 400 that was in the 1967-69 442's was 10.5:1 compression and had warning stickers to use premium fuel only.

 

I know this is waaaaaay over simplified, but as a general rule lift makes the torque, and duration determines where in the rpm range the torque comes in.

 

You may want to do a search. There were some very long and informative cam discussions over in "Advanced Tech" within the last year. To rehash it all now......I just don't have the time and energy at this moment. But as others have pointed out, the two cams you mentioned are very close.

To really answer the question of what would be optimal for you, you need to give a lot more detail about your combo. How do you plan to use it, auto or manual tranny, gears, what fuel, what's more important (drivability, emissions, low and mid range performance vs. top end power) and two biggies: what is your compression ratio and do you have head flow numbers, etc.?

In very, very general terms the current trend in high performance street cams is more lift/degree of duration. This is a good trend, but like everything else it can be taken too far. The CC XE lobes are good examples of this philosophy. I am a big fan of them, but they are not the be all and end all for every use.

Rich Krause

 

blaspamy, do not listen to this man! He knows nothing

 

Thanks for the replies. My goals for the car are 400 rwhp na, and I do take it to the track a fair amount, but it is also my daily driver. So i guess I am looking for max power that may pass emissions with a good tune.
Brandon

 

buy some really really good heads.

 

Alot of people get confused with advertised duration and duration @ .050. Big difference in numbers.

Ryan

 

Not confused. Many "musclecars" had cams well into 230-240 @.050" range....from the factory!