I have a 72 corvette. Needless to say that is where most of my questions come from. With the stock small block hood, clearance is my main problem for which intake to choose from. I don't want to change hoods. I'm using the sock 350 with flat top pistons and stock heads. I'm running headers and right now i have the summit stage 1 intake with a holley street avenger 670 cfm. I have the stock distributor with the breakerless conversion with an accel breakerless coil. The cam I'm running is the comp flat tappet xtreme energy 274 with .487 -.490 lift and .230 -.236 @.050. I also still have the stock q-jet and an edelbrock original torker single plane for hood clearance if used. Without spending gobs of money swapping back & forth and running dyno tests can you give me any direction on which way to go. I also have a mild stall converter in the original th400, which has been built.  The differential gear going by the tire & drive shaft test seems to be a 3.08. Have I picked the wrong cam or am I in the right direction. I would like the car to run in the mid 8's in the 1/8th mile if possible. Thanks for any tips.  

Hi. You may not have picked the wrong cam, you just might not have the right gear for the cam you have. The XE274 is a bit much for 3.08 gears. I probably would have gone with the XE268 but hindsight is better than no sight at all. Your looser converter is a good choice. Have you thought of going to at least 3.73's? They would give you a noticeable improvement in acceleration. We had an 1/8 mile track when I was a teenager and I remember running 5.38's in my '56 Chevy because I wanted to be one-up on all the local guys who were running more power than I was. I don't recommend you go that far, but the 3.73's would be a good move. You might also pick up a curve kit for your HEI. Start with the heavy set of springs and work from there until you find the combination that works. Hope that helps.  

Hi. You may not have picked the wrong cam, you just might not have the right gear for the cam you have. The XE274 is a bit much for 3.08 gears. I probably would have gone with the XE268 but hindsight is better than no sight at all. Your looser converter is a good choice. Have you thought of going to at least 3.73's? They would give you a noticeable improvement in acceleration. We had an 1/8 mile track when I was a teenager and I remember running 5.38's in my '56 Chevy because I wanted to be one-up on all the local guys who were running more power than I was. I don't recommend you go that far, but the 3.73's would be a good move. You might also pick up a curve kit for your HEI. Start with the heavy set of springs and work from there until you find the combination that works. Hope that helps.  

Thanks for the info. I wasn't sure of messing any further with the stock distributor was worth it. But I also didn't want to spend $350 on an MSD distributor either.  More than likely I will at some point in the future.  I also wasn't sure of the gears I was tossing the 3.55 and the 3.73.  What do you think about the intakes?  Single plane with a holley or Dual plane with a q-jet?