After making some changes to my skylark I want to change cams. When I rebuild the 300 4v the plan was to use it occasionally for towing and more general use- but now another vehicle will tow and I can drive another car for rainy days. I have the KB 1XA now but am considering a crane cam with similar lift (I don't want to redo the springs) but has much more duration and a different lobe center. Right now it has great low end but is not pulling at higher rpms. Previously I had a Isky 256 supercam in this motor and I liked that cam but now have lower gears and could use a bigger cam. Specs of the cam are: 226 @0.05 lift intake, 234@0.05 lift exhaust, max lift intake 105, max lift exhaust 115 with a overlap of 68 (advertised) and 10@0.05 (part #890631). My 65 skylark convertible has 10.25:1 pistons, postons headers, recurved electronic dist., 600 holley, 200r4 with 2800 rpm converter and 4.11 gears. With the lockup it runs about 2200 rpm at 60 mph. What do you guys think?
I was wondering what kind of performance gain you got from the cam, Im currently running an all stock drive train but soon hope to be upgrading to a th350 with a 2200 convertor. Thanks, Philip
It's big, but then you have the gears. With a little porting, you can get big results with a smaller cam, I love the 262 duration camshafts. Pocket porting and backcut valves go a long way.
I like the KB 1XA but I actually think the old cam (Isky 256) was better. Either are much better than stock. I did not degree either cam and it is possible that the 5 degree advance on the KB 1XA is making less upper end power than it should. I will degree any new cam this next time.
The Isky 256 is the cam I was looking at getting because my car is an original 4-barrel and I will be getting a th-350 later this month and hopefully a rear end with higher gearing, because I probably don't need a posi(massive torque of the 300). Thanks, Philip
Isky 256 The 256 was a great cam with the 300 4v and th350. The car I had at the time ran great with the stock gears. I don't know the ratio as I don't have the car anymore but it ran 3000rpm at 65mph with the tires I had- so you can compare your ratio to that. The only reason I changed with the re-build is the 200r4 has a much lower 1st gear and I thought it would be fun with a bigger lift cam but the 256 has a much more aggressive ramp rate and therefore ran as good or stronger than the 1XA. I changed to lower gears to be able to use the OD. I would recommend the 256 with the 350th to anyone, i drove it for 16 years and loved it.
