Hello everyone. Just bought a 2000 c2500 I'm using to tow a heavy 5th wheel. I'm a LONG time auto tech(with brain). I do have some time to build this engine but money is tight-gee,big surprise-.I plan to ditch the iron heads and go 799's bumping up the compression a bit. My first cam of choice was the comp 54-424-11 hi lift. The price was a bummer though. Then I looked at stock cams and the stock ls3 cam looked interesting. I'm looking for as much low end grunt as I can get BUT I do understand that if I want the truck to tow heavy I might have to tow in 3rd,even some wot for big hills and grow some $$ and get the better cam. You folks have been at this a long time so what do you think? Oh, the budget is around 3k but 2k would be better. I've found heads for 300 a pair. Keep/port the truck intake? Will most likely go long tube headers into 3 inch single? Other ideas? Thanks for any replies.

 

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Stick with the truck and preferably get it professionally ported. Peak speed shop does porting on factory intake manifolds, so I'd look into that. As far as cams, Comp Cams has a 206/212 112lsa+2 cam #54-408-11, which is the first shelf cam I'd take a good look at. With a truck cam for towing I'd stick within the 206-212 duration range for the intake lobes, and from 210-218 duration for the exhaust lobes. I'd also keep the keep the LSA in the 212-214 range with the cam having 2-5 degrees of advance. With you using ported heads with a higher SCR and LT headers I probably go with a single pattern cam or one with very little I/E duration split, and lift in the .550"-.600" range to get the most out of the additional flow from the ported heads and LT headers. FYI al lot of the cams that'll be good for you towing will have a high DCR, so there's no need to go above 10.5:1..
A 212/212 112lsa+5 would be a good choice in a custom grind.
http://peakspeedshop.com/Zen_Cart/in...x&cPath=65_127
http://www.ws6project.com/user_stor/...e-rpm-206-212/