2004 bagged 2wd crew cab
Weekend warrior/show truck
Stock lm7 with a k&n cai and cat back exhaust.
Wanting a small cam with decent chop
Thinking TSP stage 3 truck cam
216/220 550 low lift
They offer 3 different lsa
111 lsa 112lsa 114lsa
What is you guys thoughts?

 

The 111 will chop more than the other 2.

It will also move your powerband down in the rpm range some also.

 

The Howard's Rattler in this 5.3 Silverado sounds mean. It's a 226/234 .525/.525 109* LSA

 

Needs more lift. I’m wondering if they have a high lift version on their site?

 

Not sure, but yeah I agree if OP gets long tubes. Cast iron manifolds is his bottle neck so more lift is probably air flow left on the table. The "little chopper" I have (.597) would sound meaner chop wise in a little 5.3 than It does in my bigger LQ9.

 

Would the Howard Rattler cam be a improvement over the tsp stage 3?
for now I'm just looking to do a cam change and a custom tune. Eventually I will be adding long tube headers off road Y pipe and some sort of Flowmaster cat back. I am planning on keeping my stock converter

 

Performance wise there's not going to be a big difference. The TSP will be smoother all around and easier to tune and have a slight chop. The rattlers large split between intake & exhaust duration and it's 12 degree overlap is going to chop nicely in a 5.3 engine. The down side to big overlap cams is they stink of un-burnt fuel during idle and they are somewhat finicky to tune. The TSP has a minus -4 degrees overlap and will sound very tame next to the rattler.

It really depends on what you want, that said my Cam Dynamics "Chopper" cam is perfect for my goals and has 11 degrees of overlap. Great low end torque with the hot rod sound I was looking for. I only needed a slight MAF curve tweak in the tune from my last camshaft. Idles nice and choppy all day long, cruises smooth with the wideband dead on stoich but stinks a little more at idle. Another thing to add... if you have emission testing you'll never pass with a lot of overlap, plus the annoying climate change ***** chanting "how dare you" lol

 

With any cam that has positive overlap, you’re going to get the raw fuel smell but tuning EoIT will help some.

 

how dare you

 

If you want to keep your stock converter you have to use a pretty small cam. TSP Stage 1 or 2 high lift would be my choice.

The high lift cams even when all things are equal except the lift itself, make more power EVERYWHERE in the rpm range. So if you compare a stage 1 high lift to a stage 1 low lift (600 vs 550) the 600 makes more power from idle to redline.

You'll see the best performance in a truck with a stock stall if you go with the lowest LSA, the lower LSA closes the intake valve sooner and builds power earlier in the rpm range, which you severely need with a stock converter. So stage 1 cam, 111 LSA would be a good choice. Stage 2 probably do okay as well, stage 3 is getting a little big for a stock converter.

But, that's me assuming you have a 5.3. If you have a 4.8 Stage 1 is the highest I would go.