[ProdigyCustoms]

I do not pretend to be a cam expert, but have a few motors under my belt and have been lucky enough to break bread with some of the worlds best cam experts.. Without writing a book, I will touch on basics. A 110 LC cam is your typical compromise torque / peak power cam. Most all mass production cams (280H, 292H, etc) use a 110 LC. If you want peak power, you would use a low LC number like 106, which also will sound like a popcorn machine at idle. For a smother idle, more torque, less peak power, but more FI friendly, I would look in the 114 LC range. 114 also happens to work well for nitrous and blowers. FI, Nitrous and blowers hate all the overlap in 106 LC cams. Also, overdrives HATE smaller LCs as these motors are typically miserable at lower RPMs. It is very possible for the car to be still choppy in overdrive. My street racer (106 LC) with 4.10s, no overdrive still sounds like a machine gun at 2500 RPMs on the interstate. But NA applications that run in high RPMs primarily (like my street racer), LOVE lower LC numbers and make killer power up high.

With a 540 CI, your going to make 650HP by accident, you can easily afford to give up a few peak HPs, for a smoother driver. I can give you a some real numbers from recent experience. Project Prodigy has smaller 310CC heads with a mild port but has a tick more compression at 11:1. Prodigy is fuel injected with a FAST XFI. We run a little baby 256 / 260, ..640 / .640, on a 114LC. It idles nice, cruises in 5th at 70 MPH fine with 3.73s, will annihilate the 345s at will in any of the first 3 gears, and made decent power. We started the engine dyno run at 3500 RPM and it was 610 TQ, made the pull to 6700RPM and held over 600 TQ to 6000 RPM with a peak of 642 TQ in the low 5000s. Peak power was 684HP at 6400RPM. Sure we could make 750 HP with a bigger cam and a 110LC, even more with a 108 or even a 106. We also could make a lot more peak power with some 357 AFRs, but believe me, 684 HP is plenty and then some for a totally drive able package.

To the cam experts. You do not need to tell me there is a LOT more to cam science. I am aware of this. I am simply talking basics here. If you want a novel, I will have Harold come over a saw a few (thousand) words, LOL!