camshaft recommendation? tw heads

you know the stage 1 cam from trickflow is really a stock replacement cam. With your mods i would be looking at more cam. I'm sure there are many guys here online running the stage 2 with no piston to valve issues. What you have to look for in this clearence is the duration of the valve opening. Max lift is not an issue as long as you heads and springs can take it. The issue is how long the valve is open when the piston is approaching tdc again.

Another thing i was thinking is that with that head and the design/angle of valve you could probably get away with the stage 2. Make sure you are not retarding the cam though. You are still going to have to plastercine the the piston to valve clearence. I like to do that without the head gaskets on so you know you have a little more clearence then you mic the test at. Still it would suck to buy the cam and find out it doesn't work. 2 bad i didn't have any real experience with that cam and just spout off theory.

After doing a search of the stang net archives it looks like the stage 2 would be close but leaning toward the needing of flycutting the pistons to run it even with the twisted wedge head. Perhaps a comp cam XE270HR or XE274HR would be a better choice. But there again call comp cams to determain how close those cams would be.

I would look into a custom cam to take full advantage of the stuff you already have.

I ran the TFS stage 2 with the TFS track heat heads on a stock 90 5.0 short block, installed straight up. I checked P/V and there was enough. Almost a quarter inch on the exhaust side, and although it was a while ago, I think it was about .120" on the intake side. Most guys suggest a minimum of .100" on exhaust and .080" on intake, but with hydraulic rollers I prefer .100" on intake to be safe. I think the stage 2 cam is close to as big as you can run without flycutting, but mine fit and worked fine.

With a cam that is approaching the limit though, you should always check it yourself. I recommend using old precompressed head gaskets, and checking at least one cylinder on each bank because it it common for clearance to differ from bank to bank, and sometimes from the front to the back of each bank.

I would also suggest the track heat heads with the stage 2 cam because of the better spring set that comes with them.

Good luck.

-Matthew

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