he also had afr 205's on the car with those gains.

 

Even so, the cam is still good for 30+rwhp.

 

see this man gets it. its best bang for buck. everyone thinks they need to do supporting mods first, because they say something like "but you wont get good gains from the cam untill you have headers" well so what? you get better gains from a $400 cam than from $400 in headers and such. my plans are to make a sleeper out of my car, ported manifolds, gutted cats, worked heads and something like the cheater cam. maybe even some spray.

depending on what cam you are getting i would for sure think through doing a cam first. if its something like the trex... maybe not best to run it with stock manifolds. but if you are just going to do something like the TR224, hot cam or any of the other middle of the road cams id 100% do the cam and valve springs first, before doing headers. plus you can just tell people its stock

 

any cam in the TR224 range is pretty noticable sound wise...regardless of stock manifolds, I don't think anyone is going to be fooled

 

It all depends on the specs. There are even bigger cams than a 224 that won't be noticeable.

 

I did cam first back when I had a '94 Z28. Granted it was only the hotcam and 1.6 rocker upgrade but it was a noticeable improvement even w/ stock manifolds. I eventually went w/ headers but the cam was more noticeable. As for my LS1 I did full exhaust first and obviously I picked up some power but when I put my cam in it was a BIG improvement! I would say do exhaust first just b/c the sound is SO much better plus you will get decent gains even if it's not quite as much as with the cam only.