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The 284 -292 all pull like crazy on upper end and are good race cams they are not good on the street.

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I know as I drove one for close to 20 years.

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The 292 and 284 are lucky to get 8-10mpg on a good day.

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As I said use them if you got them but face facts the new generation of cams are far better.

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I don't have enough experience with the new flat tappet hydraulics to give any great insight here, but I would hope in 30 years of advancing technology some gains could be noted. I'm pretty sure when you suggest a 484 will get "8-10mpg on a good day", and that your similar specs Racer Brown cam gets a "legit 14mpg", I have to wonder how you achieve an extra 4-6 mpg just with a cam swap from very similar grinds. It's not possible IMO, but if you believe it- I'm not here to rain on your parade. A few tenths sure, but not a 50% increase in gas mileage, IMO anyways...


Why stick with ANY flat tappet hydraulic cam if technology and mileage are what you are after anyways- isn't ANY hydraulic cam nowadays a "dinosaur"? No zinc in the oils lately only compounds the problem..
A hydraulic roller would be the way to go over any flat tappet hydraulic cam nowadays IMO. Why compromise?

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And with fuel at $4.30 a gallon I still want to drive my car just my 10 cents

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I drive all my cars at $5.00 a gallon, I think you would be better looking at EFI and hydraulic roller cams (or a 4 speed auto/OD tranny) than a different hydraulic flat tappet for gas mileage worries, IMO anyways??

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My GTX has the 284/484 Mopar cam. During recent discussions on the board I was told by many that they really disliked this cam (their opinion was the stock 440 cam was just as good under certain circumstances).

Anyway, I currently have a low stall converter (~2100 rpms) and a 3.55 suregrip. If I swap in a Dynamic or PTC 3000 rpm converter would that wake the cam up or should I change the converter and cam together? If so, what cam?

This is a 100% street car.

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They are poo poo dog cams. Unless you have a3k stall, 3.91's 10:1 (or better) good exhaust (headers)RPM intake (or like), good carb they are dog cams. They don't pull until 3k or better, make no power down low. If you have all the above they will work pretty good however they are not a good street cam. They have terible idle quality and pull zero vacuum.

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Great assessment.

Just not ACCURATE.

Have you ever actually ran a 484/284 in a car? Give us the specs on the engine.

I've ran a ton of them, my Demon had the P4120235...

LESS than 10.1 to 1 compression
Pulled VERY good down low. (with a tunnel ram and 2x4bbl too)
Made tons of low end power.
Idled solid as a rock in neutral and in gear.
EXTREMELY drivable, it was a great package.
Pull "zero" vacuum? Get real, my Demon had POWER BRAKES, it never had a hard pedal in the 10 years I regularly drove it on the street.

The car was fairly well known as I had it out all the time, in the middle of winter in 6" of snow even. I drove it year round for close to a decade. My wife went shopping in it quite a bit.

Could it be you guys who don't like the MoPar Performance stuff are setting up your cars WRONG, then blaming the parts instead of the tuner..?


Take a look- 484/284, tunnel ram, two four barrels and it passed AirCare emissions testing without detuning at all every single year, from 1991 until 2000.

I raced alot of cars in that time in the lower mainland of B.C., ask around how poorly my combo worked, most people asked if the car was a roller cam, and we would all laugh.

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yes i have. Will the car run? sure it's a 440. last one was a67 coronet 9:1 440 906 heads with a little work, 2200 convert, headers, CH4B intake 750 Eddy car and 3.55's it was a DOOOOOOG. Put in a Summit 488 cam and it ran great. The old style 484's and 509's like to run form 3k up. I also had a 69 Charher w/ a stock 73 440 that somebody put a 509 in...doooog.
Glad yours worked. what gear? what stall?

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Do you degree your cams? I have had very good luck with the old 484's & 509's

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Not all of them. I've tossed them in straight up on a Cloyes chain many a time. I have seen guys try running them both advanced/retarded before, but they were starting from a timing set stamping, not actually degreeing the cam at all. Some have worked, others have been pulled and degreed, the stock "straight up" position isn't always "straight up".

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Which 284 484 cam...
There is original 0235 and the later one 07697. The later one is much more streetable with less overlap. We have run the 0235 in a couple of different engines with good sucess, its downside is low vacuum so if one has power brakes...
Check it out..

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I have ONLY ran the P4120235 cam, never tried the newer one...
Power brakes with small reservoirs in most of the vehicles. No hard pedal, ever. K car boosters.... 68 A body boosters, you name it.

This was my wife's daily driver, it's booster is straight out of a K car.

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Do you degree your cams? I have had very good luck with the old 484's & 509's

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Not all of them. I've tossed them in straight up on a Cloyes chain many a time. I have seen guys try running them both advanced/retarded before, but they were starting from a timing set stamping, not actually degreeing the cam at all. Some have worked, others have been pulled and degreed, the stock "straight up" position isn't always "straight up".

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Which 284 484 cam...
There is original 0235 and the later one 07697. The later one is much more streetable with less overlap. We have run the 0235 in a couple of different engines with good sucess, its downside is low vacuum so if one has power brakes...
Check it out..

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I hope you don't think I said the purple shaft cams are bad? I just was pointing out the design and application differences.
I have used the 284/484 in a 318, a 383 and a 440, and the 292/509 in a 360.
Some good points about the Mopar cams are they are inexpensive, and easy on valve springs, and usually have plenty of piston to valve clearance making them easy to install in nearly stock engines. They also make good power in their RPM ranges.

My point is most newer grinds are designed to have a wider power curve, and better idle quality, while making just as much or more power (even though you may need a dyno to see the differences?)

As for the engine combination, the 318 with the 284/282 was a mostly stock 9:1 compression engine with a Edelbrock streetmaster 318 intake and 600 cfm Holley, headers with thrush mufflers and 4.10:1 gears. The problem was my TransKing hi-stall converter broke, so I ran the '67 Coronet with the stock converter. Did I mention this was built around 1978-1979? The idle was very choppy, and with the stock converter the car was slow off the line, but at 3,000 RPM it rocked.
I actually won many races with that car because it took off so slow, it would spot the other guy a car length or so before it got into the cams RPM range ant ran the other guy down on the top end.
The 360 with the 292/509 cam was a stout engine using 11:1 compression pistons, ported heads, headers, Torquer II intake and 750 Holley. The engine was in a Challenger with a 3,000+ stall converter and 4.10:1 gears. As you can tell from the combination this one ran well.
The 383 with the 284/484 was again a mild, near stock engine with 9:1 pistons, Mopar template ported heads, weiand intake and carter 750 cfm carb. I ran it with both manifolds and headers.
This was my '71 Charger with 3.23:1 gears and a factory Hi-stall converter, but it would stall around 1,800 rpm. This engine gave me problems for quite some time untill I found a problem with the carb, but the car still needed a higher stall converter.
The 440 with 284/484 I built for a friend. The engine has 9.5:1 compression, ported heads,headers,converter, etc. The large 440 runs good with this cam, but with 440 CID it's hard to overcam the engine.

In the mid 1980's to mid 1990's I used some of the Crower Compu-Pro cams. These were some of the first cams to take advantage of the larger 0.904" tappet diameter offering faster ramp rates, wider lobe seperation, higher lift per duration, and using the split intake/exhaust lobe durations where the exhaust lobe was slightly larger than the intake lobe.

Since then I have been using the Hughes Engines cams or solid roller cams (various manufacturers.)

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I think we see things pretty much the same, maybe slightly different experiences.

I believe swapping out a cam will usually result in minor gains or losses when comparing similar sized cams. Differences best found on a dyno, as you say.
I don't think a cam swap from one similar cam to another similar cam - even ballpark specs- will result in 50% mileage increases or tremendously great power gains.
Swapping from a flat tappet hydraulic in a 12 to 1 engine to a roller cam will be possible to net a tremendous gain, but not what many of the above scenarios suggest.

The newer hydraulics might provide very modest gains, but I don't see why the modern hydraulic rollers wouldn't be looked at for performance gains, unless it's initial cost...? Taking the zinc out of our oil sure isn't flat tappet friendly!

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We are in agreement here. A big part of my considerations when choosing a cam for a street driven car is the Altitude here in Denver kills the vacuum signal, and makes an engine that has weak low end power even worse. A stock enging that should read 20" vacuum at sea-level is lucky to see 15" vacuum at this altitude.

I have been looking at the hydraulic roller cams because of the oil quality problem, but the price of the lifters is pretty steep. I think cam and lifters cost close to $1,000!