Cam or Headers?
Originally Posted by MadBill
I'll go against the crowd: Think bang for the buck. Although a big cam will be choked by the stock exhaust, it will still make more power than headers with a stock cam, and will be cheaper than good stainless merge headers. Besides, you can always plumb in a cut-out and get most of the benefit of headers when you really want it. Bonus: When you do finally get headers, you'll pick up maybe 50 HP instead of 20!
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
Originally Posted by Cop Car
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
Originally Posted by TruBloodTransAm
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
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.
