I would t do some pistons either. Flat tops and get your quench right.

And on a side note, I have a ls1 stage 2 btr 227/234 cam I put up for sale. It has less than 4000 Miles on it. You can save yourself some money that way. I wouldn’t go with a stage 1 at that size of an engine.

Don’t order head gaskets until you choose whatever piston/rod combo your going to use, and it’s mocked up in the engine. You must know where your piston is at...above or below deck height...before you order headgaskets. This dimension will vary, depending on what you choose.
Concerning the forged setup...it’s much easier to find piston selection with a 6.125” rod, than a stock rod, so I would go with forged stuff also. Not much available for 6.098” rods.

I’m putting a turbo on the car right now and I have the timing cover off the engine waiting on more parts. I wanted a sleeper so here’s my chance to put a smaller cam while it’s apart. Honestly I’m on the fence about it because I’m afraid I’ll lose power and the car won’t sound as good. I want it to idle almost as low as stock, this cam idles at 725-750 in a 5.7. Would be under that in a bigger motor. If I don’t sell it, my feelings won’t be hurt to be honest but with a turbo I really don’t need this big (it’s really not that big either) of a cam. It’s pretty torquey in my 5.7 and in a 6.0 or bigger I bet it would be a hoot to drive.

I don’t but into the thought that a low lobe separation has more torque or makes a car faster. In the real world I don’t think that’s the case. Everything I’ve every built including 4 wheelers I always ran a wider lobe separation and my combos were always faster than the next guy. I’ve always been known to have above average running stuff. I the 4 wheeler drag world I used to be in, everyone thought that 106 lobe separation was the ticket. I started going wider and as I did the thing made more power, went faster and was more rideable. I still hold the record for rwhp on that particular engine.

My theory is this. If you have a purpose built drag machine and everything is tailored to a specific rpm range, then maybe a tighter lobe separation will be faster. But, if you have a car you enjoy driving around, you care if it spits raw fuel out at idle and stinks, gets very poor fuel mileage and idle real rough, well a wider lobe separation is what you want. I relate this to the old belief that exhaust back pressure is good and small tube headers build more tq. Which we all know was a sham. But hey, what do I know?

I’ve seen that test before but that doesn’t change my mind. I’m not so sure that every cam profile will respond the same way that particular one did in that test. Plus the peripherals (compression, heads, intake, etc) May be tailored more towards the tighter lobe seperation.

If you look at the EMC engines, where average power wins, you will see narrow LSA cams are pretty common.

To the op, my buddy has a stage 3 tooley cam in his 6 liter gto. It’s pretty rowdy and it’s very loud. I’ve got video of it. He has like 6 mufflers on it too lol. He had to go to a 3800 stall vs his 3200 because it actually slowed down at the track. It also idles at 950. The funny thing is since he put it in he hardly drives the car anymore, just something I noticed. The cam he had before was a 220/220 Texas speed. Once he changed the stall it it I think he picked up a tenth and almost 2 mph over the smaller cam. He was disappointed. So as you know, bigger ain’t always better especially if everything isn’t matched.