[racin69z]

A lot of it depends on the compression ratio of your crate engine. If you have a 9-9.5:1 motor you could go up to about 224 duration @ .050. If you are only at 8-8.5:1, I would not go over 214 @ .050. Too big and you'll loose too much low end torque.

Torque is made by cylinder pressure. At low RPM the biggest things that help with cylinder pressure are compression and cubes. If you know what crate engine you have, you should be able to find out what the compression is.

I have built about 30 different small block combos, and the ones that ran the best always had the compression matched well to the cam. Another thing I found was that the less expensive brand cams (summit, wolverine, PAW) work just as well as the name brands as long as the specs are similar.


Good Luck
Lynn