Yet another cam recommendation

[ntsqd]

What is the best cam for my 408 stroker?

















Asked completely tongue in cheek.

 

[Mark1911]

What is the best cam for my 408 stroker?

















Asked completely tongue in cheek.

427........

 

[ntsqd]

Having worked in a performance racing engines shop, but not directly involved with those types of decisions (I designed & built the dyno & it's supporting hardware), I have seen how changing from an OK cam to one that is just a little more optimized can make a difference.

I recall two engine programs in particular that really benefited from dialing in the cam. Oddly enough, both were Ford engines. One was an engine for a very specific dirt oval racing class where nothing about the combo was as Ford built it, and no one had really done anything like it before so even the cam grinder was making an intuitive guess initially and then iterating from there. The other was a deliberately low performing, large displacement engine where intake manifold vacuum was the goal. I shouldn't say "low performing" but we had no need to consider how much HP the engine made as it wasn't being used for power. We eventually arrived at so much manifold vacuum that the company wanting these engines had to ask for less because other parts of their system couldn't handle it.

Without the benefit of being able to spend the dyno time and money to sort out the best cam for any particular combo I doubt that most could tell the difference.

 

[Timmy390]

427........

I was going to say FE.....monster torque...kind of particular to the 390

Tim

 

[73azbronco]

Agree to disagree. (and still agree!)

A 1996 Ford Explorer 5.0 weighs 3,927 lbs.
My 1965 Sunbeam Tiger with an Explorer 5.0 weighs 2653 lbs.
A 1996 Econoline 350 with a 5.8 has a GVWR of 9500 lbs plus 7000 max towing = 16,500 lbs.
(These all have the same camshaft.)

There are two fundamental ways to make a camshaft decision.

1. Empirical Application. Ask a wide variety of users with similar configurations for the best result.
2. Design Engineering. Provide your requirements to an expert to create the best result.

The OP did the right thing with his first post:
"Hey everybody, what's the best camshaft?" Four people replied with the same (correct) answer.
Then he went down the great camshaft Abyss. He asked an "expert." (check my sig-line...) And he got a different (wrong) answer.

I'm not going to divulge WHY his expert returned the wrong result...but suffice it to say that it has everything to do with providing the incorrect requirements. Bear in mind that the greatest camshaft engineering minds of the 21st century landed on the Motorsport Alphabet Cams of the 1990's. Also keep in mind that anyone that quotes an "advertised duration" should be summarily dismissed. The replies above in this thread are all based on duration at .050. Advertised duration is ONLY interesting if the lobe ramp rates are relatively similar. But lobe ramp rates between flat tappet and roller lifters are VASTLY different. So you cannot compare them.

You can prove this to yourself by an fun experiment. Let's just say that we find the "best" camshaft is the free one that came in your 1993 Cobra 5.0 HO engine. (209/209@.480") And let's just say that you knew exactly the lobe ramp rate, lift, duration, Centerline, and LSA. Let's assume that Comp Cams has basically cloned that cam added 10% lift and calls it "Lars" Later, Ford further optimizes that cam by reducing lift, and reducing duration, puts it in an Explorer, and calls it "Fred." Now call each manufacturer and ask for a camshaft recommendation. Not ONE manufacturer is going to tell you to buy "Fred." Even COMP will not recommend "Fred." And THAT is the camshaft rabbit hole. (...because they all interpret that you want something "better" than Fred.)

Now imagine that you had selected a camshaft with a 114 LSA and you had the entire research and development resources of FoMoCo to create a fuel map and timing profile to program into your EEC-4 host ECM. Pretend that you spent thousands of hours and optimized that ECM for drive-ability, emissions, and gave up a little bit of idle tip-in for higher horsepower at high RPM. Then imagine that you programmed that optimized fuel map into your EEC4 host, and called it an A9L. Then you named all of the other EEC-4 computers different things, (like A9P, A3M, etc...) but the fundamental fuel map was always tuned to a 114 LSA. Then you put that cam in everything HO. Then some guy puts that engine into an early Bronco, and does not like how it tends to stall when idling agaist a big rock in 4-lo. So he scours the earth for a better cam, with a little more lift, and better off-idle performance, and doesn't give a hoot about max HP, but wants drive-ability, efficiency, and reliability. He lands on the "Lars" cam. (Shout out to NorCalBroncos! and @lars )

...but wait, there's more. It is 1987, and the world is just now adopting SEFI. But some ass-hat in the marketing department wants to lick the boots of some other ass-hat in the racing department, and he wants bigger horsepower at top end for his racing Fox Body Mustang. So he asks for a better cam. Problem is that the racing guy is NOT running EEC-4. In a convergence of all possible things going wrong, the Alphabet cams are born.

I'm not going to recommend a cam, because everyone knows that the best performance camshaft for a 5.0 is a 351W. and the best cam for the 351W is a 408 Stroker.

So we agree

Camshafts are unfortunately designed down to the pound of weight and expected use. So, design for empty weight or full? Hmmmm

 

[ntsqd]

From my perspective the engine is built for the application. The cam is chosen to work the best with the rest of the engine's configuration, to extract the max benefit from all of the other parts.