Custom Cams?

If you call the cam company tech line with all your info on a Windsor, most will have a good off the shelf match with a good range of selections.. But when it is far from stock, a custom cam will be worth that last bit of what you want. Either way it’s worth a call.

I'd guess it depends on the company. I'd also be curious on how'd you measure this, and if you had all the fancy machinery to measure the tools, wouldn't you be pretty close to the point where you could custom grind yours as well? If you take into account the additional fees, delays, and perhaps human error/typos/profess goofs, compared to just grabbing the right profiled (street/race/blower, etc) one right off the shelf, that they pretty much make all day long, I'd be curious to really see the benefit.

To me, if you're at the point where you're playing with cams, you're getting tuned, and pretty much building a race car, you're putting together all these other performance parts and trying to get them all to play nice. If it were me, I'd go with as may of the knowns as I could and try to minimize all the unknowns. Thinking about whether I said two - oh - six or two - ohn - six, and whether they heard two - ohn - six, but typed in two - oh - six is not something I really want running through my head when I'm tailgating somebody at 140 on a 14 degree bank

Except for the delay part, I’m not sure I understood much of that. Since when do mustangs drag race on 14 deg banks?

Those are not the large, off the rack bumps I thought we are discussing. That gives a new insight into camshaft lobe design.

General karthief said:

You watch too many you boob videos.

Click to expand...

for the vast majority of engine builders, off the shelf cams work just fine. you just need to select the cam that fits your build as closely as possible. where custom grinds come in is when you are going for something that is designed as a one off cam specifically for your application. some people have actually seen a 30hp increase in power by having a cam custom ground. but it takes a serious computer program to analyze the engine parameters and select the proper grind. one of my former college instructors actually developed such a program before he ultimately retired and sold off his business.

If given the choice of two or more similar items at a similar price, a majority of consumers will pick the wrong one. With all of the grinds available for the 302/5.0, getting a good fit to your combo is easy for the specialist with the right numbers and all the parts in mind. The cam maker's hotline is the best way to not be the person who picks the wrong cam and has an engine that does not make power when you want it to.
Now if you have a less common engine that only has a few old designs on the shelf, or some radical parts, the same hotline will get you lined up with a custom cam that's worth some time delay to get the last bit of power you need.