Do me a favor and throw 8000 behind her and see how she does! I need to know. DO you have a stall?

 

If you are pulling 8000# then I would go with the 212/218 or this:
http://www.summitracing.com/parts/tf...make/chevrolet

And as Jarrod said... spring are an absolute must no matter what cam you are putting in. I'd pair these with either LS6 springs or the PAC 1218 (better option IMO).

 

no better towing cam than the stock cam

 

 

vinci makes pretty good tq cams also. 210/218 or the trucker 216/224 The lifters at 120K should be fine, but I would replace them if I was doing it and have the heads milled to bump compression up some if it is an LQ4. .03 should get you close to 10.1 compression, and installing the springs with the heads off would be easier, but I understand not wanting to remove the heads.

I have seen some videos where they spin the cam a couple times to hold the lifters up and if they are still falling then they used a $2 magnet rod to hold them up.

I think the 220 and larger cams are more for WOT not towing IMO. I would say throw some gears in it but the denalis cam with 4.10s I think... plus it would be expensive to swap the rear and front

Stock cam is not necessarily the best towing cam. I have a buddy with the vinci 210/218 .551/.551 on 114Lsa 3000 stall in a 05 5.3L with 3.73s gets 2 mpg better towing and pulls his boat 0-60 a little more than a second faster. lol

 

This big ‘ol jewel would have came with 3.73’s and like has been mentioned sort of expensive to swap, so I would imagine that is still what’s under the old girl, not too bad of a compromise for a healthy 6.0L, though maybe not ideal for towing on a regular basis considering the original tire height is fairly tall at almost 32”. Starting in ’02 the SD’s were equipped with 4.10’s, but the ’01 C³ and all of the GMT-800 YD’s were spinning 3.73’s. I too would stick to the Comp 212/218 or one of the smaller Vinci cams mentioned if I were looking to do a cam swap and keeping its full towing capacity if not keeping the stock cam. While not the greatest improvement, at least it was factory equipped with a 65E and came with what I feel is the best of the AWD transfer-cases, the "149", as starting in '03 the YD's started using the open differential style Borg-Warner units.

 

Well typical load is a car hauler and a car. When I scaled my Tahoe(same vehical weight as the Denali) GVW was just over 10,000. So that mean I had about 5000# behind her. It is typically once a month and occationaly it may have some equipment on the trailer such as a bobcat.

I rarely if ever will tow over 4000#-5000#.

In another thread I saw a guy who had a cam like you are recommending, then he had a 224/230 and then something bigger. He said the 224/230 felt the best towing. I will strongly consider the cam suggested a few posts up! I will check the codes to see what gear it has.

I can find it but what codes am I looking for axle ratio?

 

Gt4 is 3.73 if I recall g80 is the gov-bomb and gt5 is 4.10 if by some miracle you have it... Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong

 

I believe you know your stuff. I would love you to be wrong only becaue 4.10s would be nice.

 

LMAO, 224-230 duration cam is not going to be the optimal towing cam. I like where the guys are at with this. Keep it on the low end of the duration spectrum, keep a tighter LSA. run a 1 3/4 primary header, or if you can find a used set of Dougs with a tri design. They have been noted to make a little better low end then reg style LT's. And you def need to add good PR's and at a minimum some LS6 springs.