I have to do a fair amount of driving to get to/from work in Dallas traffic, but I want to put a good cam in my truck. anyone have any suggestions or opinions?

 

My milage has not dropped a ton form stock.

I think I used to get right about 17mpg or so with mostly freeway driving. With all my mods and mashing the pedal alot more now that it's actually fun I get about 15.5mpg. Not too bad for a beefy cam.

The trick is getting it tuned so your LTrims are right

 

I noticed a small drop in mpg before I was boosted. I was running the Crane 208/216 .500/.500 113lsa cam. I think it is mostly due to what F8LPONY said about getting on the gas more after the install The torque down low (where most driving is done) is probably lessened with most cams too. Again like F8LPONY said, if you get it tuned properly you shouldn't loose much in the mpg aspect as long as it's not a really radical cam.

 

I think I may be getting better mileage now than I did when the truck was stock.

 

I also noitce a slight gain in mph after cam and nelson tune. It could have been a combination of both.

 

I'll definitely be getting a nelson tune in the near future...after i buy some furniture. I'm seriously thinking about getting a Z06 cam for my truck, I just don't want my mileage to be destroyed.

 

If you stick with a cam that takes advantage of the flow of the heads, tune for it, and try to stay off the throttle I don't see why economy can't be there the same or more.

Most cams will move the torque peak up and increase top-end power. But since stock cams are soooo small in these trucks most of the ones available that work well for trucks help economy.

Basically, taking less work to make the same power.

 

I've always lost mileage when I've installed cams in other vehicles, but they were fairly radical, around 270º degrees in each application. I don't imagine the computer would flip out too much, but I don't trust them after a nightmare I had with my old OBD-I truck with a small cam.

 

I'd stay away from a ls6 cam unless you are getting a converter.

 

Yeah, when you get to large cams you'll drop the economy...I think that plays into how they don't burn all the fuel and whatnot. Also not allowing you to pass the sniffer. OBDII has a few more benefits over older OBDI setups. Typically a few more sensors for monitoring air and fuel delivery.

Obviously dialing in the OBDI or II computers is the only way to max the efficiency of any setup. LT headers lean ya out and make you lose fuel economy too...