FORD 289-302 C.I. 8 CYL. 1963-1995HYDRAULIC-Good for daily driven performance vehicles. Mid-range power. Hyd. Hyd. 1500 to 5500 31-218-2 268H 268 268 218 218 .456 .456 110° Slightly lower gears. Mild rough idle this is the one i bought today...
has almost the same specs as a Comp Cam High Energy cam that i used in a 302. they need a 4v and headers to breath well and i would recommend a small stall converter (1500-1800)
That looks just like a Comp 268H. Good cam for a mild build. Did you get the full kit? I think you need matched springs for that, stock ones may not work right. Call about that to be sure. 4 barrel would be good, stall optional. I have that cam and a 2500 stall, 10:1 compression on reworked old closed chamber heads, 600 Edelbrock carb. It pulls nice and hard from idle to well over 5500. If it won't rev that high for you, address your ignition system next. And about the converter. Like Mean said, a slightly higher than stock stall converter would be nice for sure, but I had the same engine combo before I bought my converter and it ran great even then.
so do cams give a big jump on horsepower or is it just like 5 - 15 hp increase??? im only imagining that pistons have some big influence on hp rather than anything else
On an other wise stock engine you can expect a 40 to 70 HP gain and about the same amount of torque.Allow it to breathe better (to use the revised valve lift/duration)of the new cam by installing better heads/intake and carb as well as better exhaust and you will see roughly a 100 HP gain...Pistons now...Thats where you can get in trouble if your not carful(same for heads)Changing piston compression height by useing flat tops or pin relocation or rod stroke will give you greater compression(or less if you dont match em to the heads well)Greater compression will allow the engine to build more power since you will gain better cylinder filling and a denser fuel air charge by virtue of the greater scavenging effect on the exhaust stroke.This also means more heat is produced...Soo a good (not marginal) cooling system is required.Depending on head type(materials) and comp ratio, you may have problems with detonation on pump gas.Alot to consider huh?This is only the tip of the iceberg to boot.
There's no simple answer to that. The whole thing is a system... Cylinder heads make the single biggest improvement, usually, but they won't do much of anything if you have restrictions elsewhere like intake, exhaust, cam, etc. On an already optimized engine, don't expect huge gains from a cam alone. On a smog era engine with a deliberately restrictive cam, gains could be high. If the other pieces are in place to take advantage of it. Basically, if you already have a good intake, carb and exhaust but your cam is stock, you'll notice significant improvement with the new cam. If your engine is fully stock right now, you won't feel as much gain. But when you do eventually upgrade the intake and exhaust, you'll feel those more than you would have with the stock cam. Make sense? And then there's the rest of the car to consider. Gears, stall... If you have moved the effective power range of your engine, which is what a cam is all about, and now you rev higher and make more power but your idle is sloppy and you're not pulling so hard at the lower RPMs, you need to address the rest of the driveline to take advantage of your engine's configuration. I know that doesn't answer your question very well, but it applies to a lot of this type of question: "How much horsepower are these headers worth?" Depends. On some cars, quite a bit, on others nothing.
