Upon choosing a camshaft, try to find one with an RPM range that perfectly matches the other parts of your car and its usage purpose.

This is the scope or the engines’ peak performance.

Below is the overview of each camshaft spec. You can say it is for better performance but a lot of car owners do not really have an idea what this upgrade is specifically for and this almost always results in dissatisfaction on the customer’s end.Ĭamshafts have 4 basic types namely: hydraulic flat tappet, hydraulic roller, solid flat tappet, and solid roller.Įach specification is usually found in the cam card which is included in the camshaft package. This may seem like a very basic question considering you are already in the process of buying a new camshaft but you have to ask yourself next: What really is this engine for? They’re typically used on older cars or those that aren’t driven much. Regular heads – These heads also use tech valves, but they don’t offer as good of a performance as Vortec heads. They require premium fuel, so be sure to choose one that offers the best performance with your engine type. Vortec heads use tech valves and provides good performance and fuel economy.

This is the most common type of head-on a 350-powered car. Put that in a tow rig, and you will need to run the thing flat out all the time to make any power.Vortec heads – This is the most common type of head on a 350-powered car. However, if he were running this at a drag strip, we don't care about low RPM since it will be run flat out, we probably only care about what it does above 3000 RPM. Specifically, if this were a tow rig, we would want a cam that gives good torque right off idle and peaks as low RPM as possible and stays there as long as possible. Ideally, with any special cases, such as a a tow rig, maybe the second cam would be good, BUT we would require more info about the build and do some research (ideally with dyno graphs) for that cam before I would blindly recommend a cam choice. If he wants a decent highway cruiser with more stock-ish manners, then he would select something like the first cam. Not sure what's unclear here, but my line of thinking is if he wants to race the thing, then we need to know more info about the build and probably move in the direction of the third cam. Oh OK, I meant aggressive as in moving in the direction of a race cam with features such as a lopey idle, lower vacuum, higher RPM peak, etc.

You said 'Each of those cams is progressively more aggressive' and that's why I was curious.

Vortec 350 with gm hot cam