Specifically, what is a performance cam?

Yeah, I know it beefs up the engine -- but how? What is it? Is it something I can remove?

 

its a shaft with lobes on it...it lets air into the cylinders and they come with all different size lobes on them to decide where your power is made in the RPM range.

It basically the biggest decider of what your engines personality is weather it's race, street or a combo of the two.

You can remove it with out much trouble but its not a beginners thing to try to swap out.

 

http://auto.howstuffworks.com/camshaft.htm

Here's a good explanation on camshaft theory

 

Howstuffworks is great. As far as performance cams, they generally open and close the valves at different points, open them to a higher height and for longer periods of time with more valve overlap(generally speaking). That all causes the engine to make more power at higher rpms, but less power at lower rpms(generally speaking again) and often with worse economy(but we don't care about that, right?)

 

Thanks -- still a little confused but am learning.

Guess adding the performance cam went along with adding an 800 cfm carb thinking they'd get more power out of the car.

 

It's a balancing act between carb size, heads, cam, and exhaust. Big cam and big carb with stock heads and it's not going to make a whole lot of difference. After the outside stuff (intake, carb, headers)...the next step is the head/cam change