I have a 383 that Ive used in a few cars simply because its reliable and very streetable. Its just a very weak engine. No take off and no top end... just a little in the middle lol. Its a 1969 383 truck engine that was rebuilt roughly 10 years ago and has maybe 20,000 miles tops on it. Was a 2 barrel engine.. all I done was put an iron 4 barrel intake on and an edelbrock 600 cfm and also headers. Just curious if a cam change would help this engine much or if Im wasting my time hoping for performance from it. Wont go any lower than 3.23 gears because I drive all my cars too much including on the interstate.

Three things make a good combo: Cam, headers and intake. You have two out of three. If you want to improve on the cam, I'd go with the Comp Cam XE262H. It's slightly "bigger" than the Road Runner cam. Good all around cam which will match up well with 3.23 rear gears and your 600 carb.

It really depends on the compression but you should be able to wake it up a bit with a cam swap.
If the engine isn't getting lots of blow by it should be good to go.

What kind of vehicle is it in?

We dropped a MP 484 cam and Holley carb on a stock 383 and had lots of fun with it in a 69 RR.

get a strip kit for the eddy 1406 (I have one & it was lean) get the initial/total/springs/vac adv spot on & what Junky said, a cam to build some low rpm psi

Right now it is in my 70 cuda. I was running 3.23 gears but switched to 2.76 since Ill be on the interstate a lot for the next few weeks. I know I shouldnt expect much with 2.76 gears lol.

your probably at about 8 to 1 cr i wouldn't get a cam with more than 220 @.050 duration.

Wonder how well this cam would work? http://www.hughesengines.com/Index/produ...mp;partid=25115

I like all of hughes cams Ive dealt with before

Mine was originally a 2 brl. motor and swapped to a dual plane 4 brl., 600 Holley, HP mani's, 3.23's, 727. It was fun, but not a barn burner. I then upped the compression with KB400 pistons, aluminum heads, 750 Holley, 1 3/4 headers, 2400 stall, bigger cam, and 3.55's. Night and day difference.

What are you using for an exhaust?
I would recommend at lease dual exhaust system with 2.25-2.50" tubes.
I would not bother tearing into the engine to do a cam swap, unless you plan an making several other changes. I would first optimize what you currently have with an eye towards future improvements.
I would start with checking the ignition curve. This is one of the easiest and least expensive things to do, and can make a big difference if it was not correct to start with. Tuning the carb and making sure you have a good fuel system would be second. Tuning the carb is more difficult, and I would take it to a chassis dyno with a wideband O2 sensor.

I am a big fan of the CD ignition systems, expecially in a setup like yours. If you want to spend some $$$ get something like a MSD Digital6 CD ignition box, a good matching coil, and high quality spark plug wires. I hear the Firecore plug wires are really nice, and the MSD wires are good too. With the CD box you can use just about any distrubitor you want, just make sure it has a curve that works with your engine. As for ignition curve, as a starting point I would start with 16-18 degrees initial at idle, and shoot for about 38 total (vacuum advance disconnected) all in around 2,500 RPM.

After the exhaust and ignition, you need to decide which direction you want to go with the engine. Normally an intake change would be next, but if the engine is going to remain mild and you already have a stock 4-bbl intake, then you won't gain much by going to a small runner aluminum intake. I think the performer RPM (large runner dual plane) would be a nice upgrade if you plan to make more power above 3,500 RPM. This would likely result in swapping the cam too, and with the low compression ratio should make low RPM toque worse which would result in needing a higher stall converter, and maybe more rear axle gear depending on tire size.

If the engine (heads) had alot of miles on them, I would actually recommend changing to aluminum heads. From a cost per performance view, they make alot of sense compared to spending money rebuilding the stock heads and upgrading them for unleaded fuel use. I have gotten slack here for suggesting the use of aftermarket heads on mild builds, but when you look at the true costs of rebuilding stock heads with new valves, guides, hardened seats, springs, and machine work/labor you can have $600+ into your stock heads, that have inefficent open chambers that are most likely closer to 88-90cc (unless milled, more $$$), and don't flow anywhere near the aftermarket heads, again unless you pay $$$ or spend hours porting them yourself, and once your done spending all the time/money into the maxed out heads, you may have performance that is close to an out of the box performance head.