I've spoken with a few people about this and have almost made up my mind, but I wanted to submit this question to the masses before moving forward...

If, for the time being, you could only have one or the other, which would you choose and why: A TR 224 cam or a set of longtubes? The car in question being a 99 SS with a lid and exhaust.

I plan to do both eventually, but I can only get one for the time being. And I know the cam won't really shine without headers, but I would expect a respectable increase with the stock manifolds.

Thanks,
Josh

 

Get the cam... The headers won't produce a lot of gains on a stock cammed car. Headers and a cam sort of go together. One really won't benefit a whole lot without the other.

 

I'd say do the exhaust work first, everything else you do after that will benifit.

 

I say get the exhaust first too, but if you can get a good deal on the cam now then get that and put it aside and save up for the headers and put them in at the same time.

 

Josh this car had stock exhaust and a cut out when it was dynoed. I don't think longtubes will do as well as the cam did. (Thats my old cam, it did better in his car than it did in mine)

https://ls1tech.com/threads/showflat...=7&fpart=1

 

IMHO, in many cases cam instead of headers could be a good idea, f.e. '02 z06 cam, however I don't think idea of TR224 is that great. The reason is stock cams have extra duration on exhaust side and you don't need that if you put LT's on, so TR220, TR224, and even reverse split cams are great with LT's . If you don't have LT's, I'd get a cam with less intake duration, something llike 222/226. That's if you don't plan to get headers soon, of cause

 

I say get the headers as well, I ended up putting my 224 in before my headers but the headers really woke it up, its funny I'm kinda going through the same thing now cause I want to get rid of these SLP's when I do my head/cam swap but I really don't want to spend the money on new headers.

 

I say get the headers first too. The reason being is that, after installing a cam and LT headers, you will want tuning. After you install that TR224, you will want to get tuning to get the engine to run right. And if you do that, then install the headers later, you will want to get tuned twice.

Whereas if you install the headers first, the car will run better on stock programming with just headers than it would with just the cam.

Just my .02.

 

I had the same situation. I went with the cam first. The tr224 on a 114 lsa and yes you can feel a difference, but it was lacking the top end. After my TTS header install she dynoed 390 and the car just screams to the stock limiter. Cam and headers go together. But just one will not give you the full potential. If I had to do it all over again, I wouldn't change a thing and would still put the cam in first.