Technical Your opinion on a camshaft

Lloyd, 283/097 is the way to go. Competition Products has one listed in the newest catalog. (Howards cam). use polylocks also. I checked Northern Auto, you should be getting Sealed Power pistons in the kit. most shops can bore a block to size if they know the brand. NHRA guys run in the elevens with 1.72 power pack heads. beat the crap out of it and have fun Pete..

 

I used to use mustache wax...but the wife kept sliding off...

 

1957 270 HP 283 Duntov cam.

 

<<My opinion is this, If you put a lumpy camshaft and a tunnel ram on a small cube engine you are going to have a car with very little bottom end power and it will be difficult to drive on the street....>>

Hear, hear! Right on....I've re-cammed more SBCs with tunnel rams than anything else, (Many errors on camshafts by neophyte customers, but the tunnel SBCs topped the list)
This is the understatement, and should be stated in capital letters.

 

Comp Cams ground me one.

 

The 1st engine that was in Tickety Boo was a 327 with 492 double hump heads, Weiand single 4 tunnel ram, it went through the lights on the 1/4 big end at 7400 rpm with a best E.T. of 11.97.
Really learned how to tune for weather changes on the single 4 tunnel ram.

Drove it on Branch river road a few times and if that engine wasn't over 5000 rpm it was what Dale Earnhart described as "like stepping on a Mushroom"

 

I went with Comp XE262H on my 0.060 over 283 w/ powerpack heads. Same cam worked really well in a 307.... Still a week or so out from firing it and probably a couple months from going down the road, so we will see.

 

Looks like you've had plenty of help already but I'll throw my hat in the ring. Call the cam manufacturer of your choice and tell them what you have. They have great software that will help with cam choice. Those old cams will probably work fine but most manufacturer's have much better grinds these days. I use Bullet Cams. They just ground me a cam for a fairly stock 327/300 hp type engine. Its a solid lifter flat tappet with 235 duration intake, 240 exhaust at .050 lift. As for the tunnel ram...probably not the best choice but they look cool!

 

And on the head gasket...if you're down in the hole a bit, check out a Fel-pro 1094.

 

My 56' had 283(std bore but set up loose including rods & mains) with 60's PP heads @ 9.5cr, corvette 2x4 intake with WCFB's, re curved 081 dist. with pertronx module, 097 cam, 4.11 posi, Muncie 4 and it ran very hard and reliably for 18 years. Loved that power combo and sound. Should have never sold it! My mistake!!

Sent from my SM-T720 using The H.A.M.B. mobile app

 

You want a good sounding hard charging small cube cam ,Look at Isky's stock eliminator cams. The stage 1 won't be as hard on springs. They are .390-.410 lift with lots of duration and a short center line.
We ran them in our stock lift rules round track stuff. We used the Competition Products Z28 valve spring upgrade.
The motor's have a crazy good idle and pull to 7500 even with stock heads when you put a decent spring on them. Should work well with your tunnel ram and 4 speed. They worked well with a 305 Chevy in a 3500 lb. stock car.

 

I was at the machine shop today and told my machinist that somebody asked me how i had the block bored without even having the pistons yet, he looked at me really funny and said "ask them where they're getting their inconsistent pistons" lol. Then he said "yeah I've seen those oval pistons". Then he asked me how did i know what pistons to buy before he knew how much oversize the block was gonna have to go to straighten it up.

 

Forget them oval pistons...if you put SQUARE pistons in a 350 (4.000˝ bore and 3.480˝ stroke) ...you get a 445 ci small block

 

The early duntov stuff is ok, that being said small valves and small cubic inch, any motor for that matter you want to open the intake valve as quickly as possible. This 283 needs a Racer Brown st14. 266 advertised duration and .485 lift 108 lobe center. Racer was way ahead of his time with valve acceleration rates. Yes I can grind one of these.

 

How creative do you want to be? I bought a used, 2nd-gen. LT-1 OEM Corvette cam, EFI manifold and throttle body to use on a 283. The 2nd-gen. LT1 has reverse cooling/w dry manifold. The manifold was modified to work on a 1st-gen. engine. 60-degree Chevy V6 roller lifters could be used in place of aftermarket linked roller lifters. The earlier 2nd-gen. LT1 cams have the mechanical fuel pump concentric and distributor gear. Roller cams don't wear out and can be reused, if not damaged, and no need to worry about them going flat during break-in. That cam is rather mild in a 350 but a good choice for a 283. The engine, along with a T5 transmission, were going into a 53 Corvette kit car. However, shortly thereafter, I inherited my dad's 55 T-bird, sold some of the Chevy parts, and donated the rest to my daughter's hs auto shop. I can't say I was being practical with the 283 build, but I didn't break the bank. It's amazing what you can discover on the net. In my case, I prefer learning from others and avoiding costly mistakes. At the time, there wasn't much available in the way of aftermarket EFI systems. There are more, better choices available, now.

 

I just remembered that I used 2nd-gen. LT-1 aluminum heads, too. Some coolant passages had to be welded up, and a hole cut into the front of each head for routing external coolant hoses. The cost of used heads+mods was considerably less than buying new 1st-gen aluminum heads.