no offense taken. i'm running that cam now. it is a bit aggressive but, i assure you will work perfectly with stock heads. i bought it for that reason. it has a bit of a lope but, who wants to replace a cam and not hear that baby chug chug ... chug chug. it also works decent with a stock converter. dual plane has a divided plenum that feeds four cylinders on each side. single plane has an open plenum where all cylinders are fed. Sick

 

Afternoon Scottd

How does it run now?

Have you done a compression check or better yet a leak down test? If not, putting in a new cam may be throwing good money after bad if you have a dead or dying cylinder or two....

I guess what I'm also asking, is do you have the motor tuned to run the best it can now? 305's are fickle little bastards sometime and just little things can make a noticable difference in drivability..

that said however,

You're runnng an edelbrock performer which is a decent street manifold for the 305 and will work OK for what you want right now...but may not be the manifold of choice for your rebuild..

if the leak down is good, ( meaning you have decent cylinder sealing and are not getting oil on the spark plugs) then a cam change will have some benifit...you will feel a difference between the stock cam and the 252-260 duratin cam...

If you have an old style 305, then you need to keep your lift less than .465 otherwise you may run into rocker arm/rocker arm stud clearance problems...(many recommend .450).

the stock 305 cam is pretty weak (emmisions strangled), so as recommended above, a cam with advertised duration around 252 - 260 would work well for your application, a split duration ( a different duration for the exhaust and intake) might also help further...

you will need lifters also, and a new timing chain set, timing cover gasket and balancer seal, intake gasket set, water pump gaskets, fuel pump gasket.

will probably also need a balancer seal saver bushing as well

With that many miles, I would also take the time to drop the oil pan, and put in a new oil pump and steel cup drive rod..(call it piece of mind) with the new cam you can drive it harder....so oil pan gasket set as well...

Just my thoughts

greg

What year is the car and what type tranny do you have?

 

The car is a 82 Z28 with a TH350 tranny. I have it tuned fairly well. I really brought this car back from the dead. The headers and dual exhaust made a huge gain, but only made the car 'tolerable' as far as power is concerned. (The car went from turd to 'ok, I guess...') Im just looking at all my options. This engine has at least 120K on it, but still runs strong. There might have been an amature rebuild done at one point in time. ( I say this because all the gasket surfaces show signs of bubba and his tube of orange RTV-intake, exhaust, oil pan) - RTV on exhaust gaskets? I dunno....

Im not planning on keeping the car for more than a few years and Im trying to justify a 350. But the more I look at it, it all seems to come in at about one grand.

One grand to purchase rebuild 350.
One grand to pull 305 apart, rebuild, add cam, trick out the heads,work out the bugs, etc....

 

You still oughta run compression and leakdown tests, though. Compression guages aren't too expensive, and they are usefull on any internal combustion engine, anyway.

 

thats incorrect information ... .480 lift is as high as you can go. that's even with a .20 thousands shave off the heads and using stock springs as long as the block hasn't been decked and your not running domed pistons. you can get alot of false info when it comes to a 305. unless you have actually built one you don't know. Sick