HSFD728
Hi everyone im in the process of rebuilding a 360 for my jeep and was wondering if anyone could help me with picking out the right cam.What i want is a good sounding cam but also one that pulls good too.The motor im boreing 30 over ,edelbrock performer intake,holley carb,and headers are about all the souping up im doing to it.Theres one cam in 4wheeldr that ive been thinking about buying but it dont give any info on it other than it works well with the edlelbrock perf intake. THANKS
tufcj
You need to select a cam around the way you use the vehicle. The way it sounds will be secondary. Unless you mud bog exclusively, you'll probably want a cam with good low end torque and better mileage. In the cam department bigger is definitely NOT better.
Those lopey idle cams that you hear in race cars are for top end horsepower. They lose a lot of low end, and mileage sucks. You need to compensate for the low end losses with gears and a high stall converter if it's an automatic.
The horsepower/torque is a trade off. To gain low end torque, you lose some top end horsepower. To gain horsepower, you lose some low end torque. In drag racing, torque makes ET, horsepower makes MPH.
Let us know what ratio gears, trans (auto or manual), and how you are using the vehicle (towing, daily driver, crawling, mud bog, drag race). Then we can suggest a cam that will work for you.
Welcome to the board.
Bob
tufcj
HSFD728
Ok ive got a 79 cj5,304,3 speed manual trans,gear ratio is 354 and 33in tires.I'll probably never tow anything with it becouse i also have a truck that does all my towing and is my DD.I live in the lower part of SC so for the most part the only off roading around here involves MUD, MUD and MUD"maybe some sand" but mostly MUD.However i dont go offroad to often so 90% of the time ill more than likely be using it to cruise around town or take it on short trips. Thanks[/list][/url]
tufcj
With 3.54 gears and 33" tires, your engine will be working hard in the low RPMs. I'd start thinking about 4.10 or even 4.56 gears to get the engine in it's optimum power band. (I went from 33s to 35's to 36's, back to 35's, and now I'm on 37s). I swapped to 4.27 gears shortly after going to the 35s, now I need to gear up to 4.88s for the 37s.
I've had very good luck with the Edelbrock performer cam in my Jeep. I've heard the Summit racing 8600 cam is good too. You don't want to over cam, so keep the total lift under .500, duration in the 260-270 range, and lobe separation around 110-112. This will give you good torque, good mileage, but probably not that lopey race car sound. With the headers and intake, you'll see a noticable gain.
AMC engines like to breathe. If you have a little extra to spend, consider a 3 angle valve job and some mild porting on the heads. It really made a difference on my 360.
My 360 has a performer intake, performer cam, Howell EFI, mild port/polish with 3 angle valve job. I'm running 1970 high compression heads with roller rockers. Exhaust is stock high flow manifolds (because of local smog laws) thru a 3" full single exhaust. I really don't see a loss of performance from when I ran headers/duals. I have enough torque to sit at idle in low/low (about 72:1 crawl ratio) and spin all 4 tires if I can't find traction.
Bob
tufcj
