Just got my ole dart sport up and running for the first time in months lol yay!

Got a new holley 2300 on it and it makes a world of difference over the single barrel I was using as far as gettiup and go lol

Ok on to my question I'm looking at getting a new Camshaft, my plan for the build is pretty typical, I want something that will perform well at the drag races, by well I mean something that wont embarrass the hell out of me lol 15 or 16 sec 1/4 mile is fine by me haha

I have no illusion about winning at all, but at the same time something that will have zip, some spark, some haul ass on the streets as sort of daily driver i guess so I don't plan on going to crazy with it, honestly top speed isn't a huge concern i figure slants aren't going to do all that great if the competition is how fast it goes so I'm gonna focus on low end, torque and acceleration is what I'll be aiming for, also would be cool if I could get it to do a wheel stand but that's just a pipe dream for now. All that being said I'm looking at a couple different cams at the moment:

http://www.summitracing.com/parts/hrs-7 ... make/dodge

http://www.summitracing.com/parts/cca-6 ... make/dodge

My only concern with the Howards Cams one is that the lift might be too drastic since the majority of my engine thus far is stock, other than the carburetor. But I plan on getting some head work done later down the road. What I might actually do is find someone parting out a slant, buy the head, intake and valve cover, have that head worked on, clean up the valve cover and have it chrome plated and then modify the stock intake to take a different carburetor bolt pattern, maybe open up the plenum and weld a new base plate to it or something, so that way I can still use my car whilst I'm prepping all of that and then take a 3 day weekend and slap it in.

Anywho would having any head work done like decking it or have the valve channels redone have a noticeable impact on the kind of camshaft I have or plan to have? Should I have the head work done first then buy the camshaft?

I know this is probably an exhausted topic and I've done some reading and probably will continue to do some more after I post this, just looking to see if anyone has used either of those and maybe point me in the right direction. Thanks.

I am going to quote something I wrote 7 1/2 years ago.

"The first performance slant I built was a performance failure. I had a Holley 390, Clifford intake, Clifford headers, Mopar 276°/.490" cam, forged +.030" pistons, high volume oil pump, roller timing set and electronic ignition. I thought I needed all that stuff, but didn't realize all that I had done wrong. The compression ratio was much too low, the distributor curve was wrong and it ended up eating the oil pump and cam gears. It had a really healthy sounding idle, but my '66 Dart was really slow.

After the cam and oil pump gear in that engine failed I put in a Comp 264° cam and a stock oil pump. The engine idled much better, was easier on the clutch and was just as fast if not faster. Recurving the distributor made it faster yet. When I finally got the compression ratio up and put big valves in the head the car really ran well. At this point I was road racing the car and poor oil control killed a rod bearing which took out the rod, a piston, the block and crank.

My '67 Valiant has a stock short block including the stock cam. I came into an Offy intake and a Holley 390 at a good price. I had a head milled for compression (it's all of 8.5:1), had larger valves fitted and ported the head myself. I had 2 1/4" exhaust with a Walker Dynomax Super Turbo muffler installed from the stock manifold to the bumper. Ignition is via a recurved stock electronic distributor and an HEI module and coil. This car is just as quick as my '66 Dart was and cost me a fraction to build."

What matters most is correcting the largest deficiencies first. As you have already improved the intake breathing I would move on to the exhaust system. You really do need to optimize your ignition timing curve too. After that it's time to take the head off, put in bigger valves, do valve pocket porting work and mill the head to raise the compression. Doing these things well will make a huge difference even with the stock camshaft. Geared properly and maybe with a better torque converter you can run 16s with the stock cam.

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Joshua

thanks for the advice I'll start with the exhaust then. I've never heard of recurving the distributor but I'm still learning to work on cars, every thing I know came from either tinkering, youtube, haynes manual or here lol I'll do a search and see what I can find on how to do that. Thanks again for the direction

Since you are starting out I highly recommend this book: http://www.amazon.com/Performance-With- ... 0931472091

This book covers a lot of basics and explains what everything does and why it's there. There's even a chapter called Avoiding the Ripoff. The book is getting a bit dated, but it's newer than any A-body!

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Joshua

thanks for this tip Joshua...this is the type of thing I was hoping to find .

Speaking of slow builds, misconceptions, ripoffs, and how the car sounds, I see that at least cam company has recordings of exhaust sounds for some of their cams.... and one has a series called 'Thumpr' cams..... too bad some guys are attracted to a 'head-turning' sound and don't understand what makes an engine go. If you want to turn heads, roll down the window and holler out some obscenities.... with a properly built engine, you will have not any problem getting away! LOL