Nitmare67

I am considering adding cams to my 99 Mustang GT. My car is already full bolt ons with gears. I live in CALIFORNIA.......so ya lots of rules and fines for smog and bs.

I have heard that many stage 1 cams will pass smog in california and have witnessed xe262ah pass smog. With the idle cranked up a bit and running good its no problem with good cats. I want a good set of stage 1 cams that are going to have a near stock idle. I have spent a good amount of time researching and running cams through engine analyizers and have found the two.

Basically for a cam to have a good idle it needs to have minimal overlap @.050

The only cams I have found to meet my ideas are

XE262AH 226/230 .550/.550 AND 113 LSA

46MPI STAGE 1 220/218 .550/.500 110 LSA

For a daily driven stick car which one of these cams would work best? I am honeslty leaning towards the modularheadshop cams but not sure. I would like to pick up 20-30hp with a cam swap but that might be unrealistic with such small cams.

I appreciate any help.

Thanks

mrtstang

The MHS stage 1 should make better all around power if you have just bolt ons and stock PI heads IMO. The 262's might give you a tad more peak numbers (due to the higher duration) but i bet the MHS ones would be a little better in the mid range (giving a better power curve up to 5000-5500 rpm or so) due to the lower LSA and ICL.

GT2ENVY

I have the xe262ah cams with a full bolt on car and I also live in CA. The cams do pickup alot in the low end compared to stock. The idle is really low. When I had my car with the catalytic converters, you were not able to hear them. Now I have an o/r h-pipe and the idle is barely noticeable. As for smog, I don't know if they pass since I don't worry about it because I make it pass illegally.