I got a set of Melling rockers from Rock Auto a little over a year ago, boxes show Made in USA.
Stock 360 Upgrades for Crusher Cuda?
- Thread starter CrusherCuda
- Start date
-
You’re headed down the wrong road looking at any of these cams or thinking “bigger” and sticking with a stock converter. You will be stuck with a turd off the line, out of the hole regardless of the 3.91 gears until you get a proper converter. You will be underwhelmed with launches at the track. Get the converter and sure, stepping up in cam makes sense. Stock converter? Noooo way!
A stock converter won’t work. You’ll start the car, move the gear selector into gear & then promptly stall. Over and over again. Those cams require a very loose converter.
Perhaps you should call a cam company up and explain your goals. You seem to be all over the place with this cam issue despite what’s being said to you.
Perhaps you should call a cam company up and explain your goals. You seem to be all over the place with this cam issue despite what’s being said to you.
CrusherCuda
Well-Known Member
Yea, I was initially wanting to get a cam that didn't required any transmission upgrades that would still put me in the 14-12.90 range. Others have done it. I thought I was set on the smaller 218/224, .462/.470 Comp cam. As this conversation progresses, suggestions have been made to go bigger, more money, more parts. That was not my initial goal. However, if it makes sense to get the bigger cam, then I will only be able to run the engine bone stock till next year or whenever. I'm not buying multiple cams. One and done. So, I am listening to everyone, and considering the pros and cons. I don't need to have the fastest car at the track, but I do want a car worth taking to the track. This is a big learning experience for me, and the initial hope was just to get a simple, " this recipe worked for me" and go get a similar cam, intake, carb, header set-up. I do like all of input, and it sure is a lot of food for thought.
Last edited:
CrusherCuda
Well-Known Member
The best option for the money and simplicity as I see it right now, is a compromise. A slightly bigger cam. Comp Cams Kit with a 224/230, .477/.480, 1600-5800 rpm. This will allow me to run the stock converter until I'm ready to upgrade the converter and install manual valve body to take full advantage of the B&M Mega Shifter. Once the trans is upgraded my times will get better. Then once I'm able to upgrade the heads, the cam should come alive. The kit has everything included and free shipping. No hassle. This cam seems popular on the interwebs as well. I wish the LSA was a little better, but that requires custom grinds and complicates the other components. The purple cam is cool, but I'm afraid it will handicap me in the first phase of the build. None of the other cam companies offer full kits in this grind range for 360 LA. Please set me straight if this doesn't seem on point.
I think the Hughes Whiplash cam is best suited for what you're trying to do on a limited budget.
The cam is the least expensive component to replace with future upgrades.
CrusherCuda
Well-Known Member
Hughes Whiplash, 223/236, .506/.515, RPM?, LSA 107, ICL 102, Stock or mild stall, 3.55 ratio max, 293hp@5000, 356trq@3600, 8.2:1CR. $573.17 for the complete kit. Rear ratio is off from my 3.91 and seems low on power compared to other dyno runs I've seen. I was under the impression I could get 350+hp and 400+trq fairly easy with these 360's. The lift is up there too. I would like to find dyno data on the Comp cam I'm looking at and compare. Both are in a similar price range. The Hughes is 167 bucks more, but might have better parts. I will look at this option.
Cams are cheap. Very.
The Comp cam @ 218 is where I would start considering what you have now. The 224 Yellow Rose suggested will be needing the extra parts like a converter to start with. I think it is a better cam FWIW.
I think you need to sit back and collect your thoughts and increase your war chest before proceeding in this endeavor. We are now 5 pages into this discussion and your no closer to resolving the goal.
You want to run the car in the 13’s. This is not rocket science but does require some thought and a bunch of parts.
The Comp cam @ 218 is where I would start considering what you have now. The 224 Yellow Rose suggested will be needing the extra parts like a converter to start with. I think it is a better cam FWIW.
I think you need to sit back and collect your thoughts and increase your war chest before proceeding in this endeavor. We are now 5 pages into this discussion and your no closer to resolving the goal.
You want to run the car in the 13’s. This is not rocket science but does require some thought and a bunch of parts.
K.O. SWINGER
Meeting in the alley since 1976
Wow! You guys are all over the place I think you have a pretty good grasp and a pretty good start.. your camshaft selection should suit you just fine. if you don't care about gas mileage by all means put a 750 double pumper on it it's Overkill at this point in my opinion. Headers are one of the best performance improvements you can do if you're in tune but are only as good as the tail pipes and mufflers that are stuffed on the end of them. Switching stuff around and buying new parts aren't always a noticeable improvement especially if they don't sing in harmony with the rest of the build. You could achieve your performance goals with a factory360 or 340 4 barrel manifold. Make sure to have a good ignition system and a hot coil to handle all that extra fuel.
CrusherCuda
Well-Known Member
Honestly, I'm a little surprised. I'm not the first to have this combination and goal, yet there is no clear recipe for success. Don't get me wrong, I appreciate all the info, but there's a lot of info and a wide spectrum of opinion. The project is just becoming another pile of parts. No quick answer to be found.
Look, click and read.
Post your 13 sec combos
Post your 13 sec combos
yellow rose
Overnight Sensation
Ok, you’ll have to help me out here.
Why is the “kit” part of it such a game changer for you? If you take your time and look around you can pretty much the same stuff. Not sure what’s in the kit, but you don’t need a garage door slamming valve spring or double tapered pushrod (and everyone knows I love those things but you just don’t need them).
So you need a cam, the lifters (there is only a couple of lifter manufacturers out there so whatever name is on the box means pretty much nothing) and a decent single spring for what you want. Nothing trick or special there. You can use a stock rocker and probably use your pushrods.
Lots of junk is popular on the old interweb, doesn’t mean it’s worth a crap. Most guys never test much of anything and they buy based on marketing hype and “testimonials” from guys who’ve never used anything else. And they’ve bought into decades old myths that never die.
Not sure how changing the LSA complicates other components. If you ***** at Comp enough they can grind that cam you like on a 106 or 108. I wouldn’t do that but you can. I’m it sure what that complicates.
I’m not bagging on you, I’m trying to understand your thought process. I will give you my thinking on why I don’t like the grind you do, besides the fact that a kit never got me excited.
The first thing that I see is that lobe was designed for an .842 lifter. GM sizing. What that means is the lobe was designed so that the smaller diameter lifter won’t dig into the side of the lobe if the grind gets too aggressive. Obviously we are taking street lobes here so that scenario doesn’t matter, but thinking about how a lobe is designed and what you give up. Seat to seat timing is a power killer, and the slower lobes have more seat to seat timing for the same, or less at .050 timing. You give up low end doing that, and that’s where most street guys want their power. It shows up in drivability.
So let’s look at the Comp lobes first. It is lobe number 5442. The lobe is 262 at .006, 218 at .050, 130 at .200, .308 lobe.
The Comp exhaust lobe is number 5201. The lobe is 270 at .006, 224 at .050, 133 at .200, .313 lobe.
I’m not a big fan, and probably never will be of gasoline burning N/A engines with headers using more exhaust duration than intake duration. On alcohol burning engines I like some split. But not on gas. The cam grinders do this because they are compromising. They assume you can’t tune, can’t learn to tune and therefore the literally dumb the cam down for you. Call a cam grinder doing this and ask them if they are using less intake duration or more exhaust duration. I say they use less intake duration. Then, to get the high RPM limit where they want it, the open the LSA up. And boom, you just killed the middle of the power band right where most guys want it. You can have a bit smoother idle that way, but you lose so much drivability it’s crazy. This stuff gets marketed as better than sliced bread. IMO it’s not.
Let’s look at the Howard’s lobe. I’d use the same lobe on the intake and exhaust. It’s 271 at .006, 224 at .050, 144 at .200, .345 lobe.
Now compare that to the Comp exhaust lobe because it won’t really compare to the Comp intake lobe.
That Howard’s lobe is one degree bigger at .006 lift, 270 for the Comp, 271 for the Howard’s. By .050 lift both lobes are at 224. Look at what happens next. The Comp lobe is 133 at .050 lift, but the Howard’s lobe is kicking its *** at 144 degrees at .200. What that means is that both lobes have the exact same timing at .050 lift but the Howard’s lobe is 11 degrees bigger at .200 lift!!! That’s exactly what I look for. Less or at least the same seat to seat timing with the same or bigger number at .050 lift and a bigger number at .200 lift.
We could get into L/D ratios, where flow really happens in the port and how it relates to rod to stroke ratio but it doesn’t really matter. Any time you can use the same or less seat to seat timing with quicker at .050 and .200 numbers you will have a fatter torque curve and more power everywhere. And you don’t give up anything.
That’s why I harp on this stuff. It’s the details that matter. A small change in cam timing can pay huge dividends all over the power curve. But marketing hype sells more cams than actual tech does. As an aside, I read an article in an industry magazine about the guy who made the Dynojet chassis dyno. He was visiting shops trying to sell his dyno. One guy heard the price and laughed in his face. The funny thing was the dyno (at that time) was 25,000 bucks. The engine builder said he could sell way more engines using that 25k for marketing than he ever could buy the dyno. The dyno guy said he could verify what his engines did for power. The engine builder didn’t care. He said the customer didn’t know 400 from 500 horsepower, but he did understand advertising. Another aside...the first engine builder I used would hand out free T shirts to anyone who came in with you when you picked up an engine. You could go to the local track and see 100 people wearing his shirts and maybe 5 or 6 guys wearing them actually ran his engines. It looked like everyone and their mother had his engines. Brilliant marketing. He sold a ton of engines just because of the T shirt deal.
I mention all of that because big, glossy adds in every magazine there is, all the “sponsored” “tests” in magazines and YouTube junk is all part of the advertising business. Magazines make the vast majority of their profits from advertising. Subscriptions pay for the overhead and such, but advertising is the gravy. More subscribers means higher advertising rate, which means more profits to the publisher.
So...do we really think in any form of testing that is sponsored by an advertiser will show results detrimental to an advertiser with 3 or 4 pages of advertising?? Nope. You don’t poop in your own kitchen.
Now onto the LSA. I already touched on it, but the cam finders love to use the de facto 110 LSA for everything because...well...it’s a compromise and an economic decision.
When these cam grinders buy cores by the train car load they are not all the same. Where the lobes are placed on the core makes a difference on where you can grind the lobe. My personal cam is on a 105 LSA and it was a PITA to find a core that could support a lobe that would net .600 lift and be ground on a 105 LSA. So the 110 LSA is the best compromise for that. Almost every core will take a 108-112 LSA. Once you go more or less than that, it gets harder to find cores.
And the 110 is a compromise because most of the time you can still run power brakes with them. Start getting tighter than that and you can have issues. To eliminate that I just converted a 73 Duster to manual disc brakes and that thing stops better with a 280 duration solid on a 106 LSA than it ever did with power brakes and a dead stock 318.
Anyway, this post is now approaching AJ length. LSA is a big deal. If you reduce duration and then open up the LSA to keep the upper RPM end where you want it will kill power right where you want it. Overlap and the overlap triangle do a bunch to fill the cylinder. Narrowing and lowering the overlap triangle to crutch an RPM, idle or braking issue is always at the expense of the most useable part of the power curve.
I just want you to consider some of this stuff before you invest in a kit for simplicity sake. And for the record, I could look through the Comp Master Lobe Catalog and find a lobe that is the same or even quicker than the Howard’s lobe. I personally don’t like dealing with Comp.
Buy once, cry once I always say.
The reason for the split is Chrysler have a weak exhaust port.
more duration and lift on exhaust gives more time to get the waste out
more duration and lift on exhaust gives more time to get the waste out
CrusherCuda
Well-Known Member
I asked to be schooled. And you sir schooled me. I try to explain what I want, and I find it's hard to get what I want. If that makes sense. I need to digest the info and look at data, but now I can understand what I'm looking at. Cams are witchcraft to me. This is one of the places I am stalled out on my Flathead V8 Ford. This is the info I needed. As far as the "kits", I don't want to put in the wrench time only to collapse a lifter, bend a pushrod, pierce a rocker, float valves or bottom out a spring. I just feel safe with the kits because I feel they have already scienced it out and the package deal is value based. Less shipping and one stop shopping. Dumb as it may be, that's my inexperienced view on it. Never thought the post would go this long, but I do appreciate the time and information.
As said by Yellowrose;
There reply;
“No problem, for a few bucks more and a slight wait time of ***, you can have it. Approximate *** is the ship time. Is that OK?”
Me - SURE!
Done deal.
I called up Comp and said I like this cam you have here. Would you please grind that on a 108 instead of a 110 please.
There reply;
“No problem, for a few bucks more and a slight wait time of ***, you can have it. Approximate *** is the ship time. Is that OK?”
Me - SURE!
Done deal.
yellow rose
Overnight Sensation
There’s a ton of info and discussion on that topic for sure, but the general consensus that I’ve seen is that a single makes more power. Using headers typically gets a single pattern recommendation from any cam company no matter what heads are used. I found that to be the case when inquiring on cam selections with Isky, Bullet, Howard’s, Jones, Schneider etc regardless whether it was a 360 mild build or a 410. The heads (stock smog 360, Speedmaster, EQ or Trick Flows) made no difference. Again, if I mentioned headers it was a single pattern. Only time I got dual pattern recommendations (Crower, Howard’s, Comp) was from (IMO) seemingly newbie novice “email responders” and they were dinky spec’d cams at that.
Harold's most popular flat tappet cams were 6-8 degrees larger on the exhaust.
It all depends on what you want for performance in the powerband curve
It all depends on what you want for performance in the powerband curve
You, I, and quite a few here know who Harold is/was but a large majority here might not have a clue. Like I said, all those companies I referenced recommended single patterns with headers. The op is thinking headers and strip time. The Jones’s the Cantrell’s, the Bolander’s the Goolsby’s etc. all recommended single patterns with the mention of headers. For the OP it’s Best to call, give the settled on specs, intended usage and go from there.
I had really good luck with Sanderson DD9 shorty headers from Century Performance. I put them in my 66 Barracuda with a 360, column shift, and manual steering. Had to massage the passenger inner fender just a bit and one tube on the drivers side to clear the steering knuckle. Other than that, no issues at all. They look great, perform so much better than the stock manifolds and they totally changed the sound with the cut outs open.
-
