cams with stock headers?

slayerripkdc

15 Year Member
Jun 3, 2003
1,341
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brewster ny
I realize you will get the most gains out of a cam swap with a full exhaust including nice long tubes. My main goal for the car is to eventually supercharge her within the next couple years and was looking for just a little more power to hold me over until than. I was wondering if you can still get close to the 300 to the wheel mark with stock motor, stock headers with offroad mid pipe or should I just not waste my time? Again she will be supercharged down the road just looking for a nice gain for the time being.
 
I'd expect a 15-20rwhp gain with a good blower cam. I remember a 2v car out of Houston Performance running low 12's 10 years ago with just a blower cam NA, and bolt ons.
 
Here's a vid of my 03 Centennial Edition with stage 3 Comp Cams, stock manifolds, Bassani offroad X pipe, magnaflow 2.5" piping and 2010 GT 500 mufflers (and a Vortech V2SQ SI trim)...

YouTube - ‪03 Mustang Comp Cams XE274H‬‏

My ceramic long tubes go on this month :)

IMG_4343.webp
 
I dont see the problem with that. Are you going to swap out your valve springs? Anderson ford motorsport has some really good blower and N/A cams. You might want to save up just a little bit more and get the long tubes while you're motor is all torn apart.. just my opinion plus youll get more power.

Are you going to install them yourself or have a shop do it?
 
I realize you will get the most gains out of a cam swap with a full exhaust including nice long tubes. My main goal for the car is to eventually supercharge her within the next couple years and was looking for just a little more power to hold me over until than. I was wondering if you can still get close to the 300 to the wheel mark with stock motor, stock headers with offroad mid pipe or should I just not waste my time? Again she will be supercharged down the road just looking for a nice gain for the time being.

I agree with winters, you are looking at a good 20rwhp gain with a decent set of cams. With stock heads you will need long tubes and more bolt ons to hit 300rwhp NA with a set of cams. With what you have now and a set of "stage 2" cams you could put down ~270-280rwhp on a dynojet. Add on long tubes, tb/plenum and you will be getting close to 300. Obviously you can see below I dyno'ed 290rwhp on a mustang dyno (most say they average up to 5% lower than a dynojet) with full bolt ons and hitech stage II's.

ModularHeadShop real world 300RWHP combo
 
Those numbers seem pretty decent, but they are for a Non PI short block.

True but the MHS write up I posted is just one example. Clearly that setup would net you over 300rwhp on almost any dyno. You can get the majority of the way there with the stock PI heads and PI block. There are several people making 300rwhp with full bolt ons and cams. My car on a dynojet would probably put down 300 or just under 300... but really, the numbers don't matter a whole bunch and I don't need to go looking for dynojets. My car is fun to drive and that is all I care about. :nice:
 
I have the blower cams in my sig. I ran them with stock headers for a while. It made 265/285 with an off road H, weld in flowmasters, MAC CAI and Xcal 2 with heavy DD wheels. Current numbers are in sig.

You can hit the 300 mark with stock headers if you get the trick flow heads and some cams.