what cam for my 408???

I've got a very similar set-up to yours, mate: VH Charger, 408 LA, forged internals, Eddy heads, M1 manifold, Crane Hi-6 ignition and a Crane hydraulic roller cam, part number CRN-699631. This is the next size down - .528/.548 and 230/238 @.050, 2600-6600 - to yours.

Someone should have mentioned to you that big cams "shrink" when you put them in strokers. That is, the rev range quoted by Crane will be about 200-300rpm less if you put the same cam in a bigger motor compared, to say a 318, 340 or 360.

Having said that, I can tell you that even my "small" cam starts to valve-bounce before it has run out of power after 6500rpm. The problem with hydraulic rollers is the lifters are heavy - which makes the valve gear more unstable - and you can't match them to heavy springs, because they are not a solid design. If you have too much spring pressure, you kill the lifters.

I've got the original Edelbrock springs in mine - 120lb seat pressure, 350lb open - which is more than Crane recommends, but I'm still getting awful valve-bounce before my engine is ready to call it quits.  

Thanks for the info mate. Like the sound of your car too. Mine won't hit the street till next year but cant wait till it does!
Decided on a cam now - ended up with a customised Hughes Hyd Roller with their in house roller rockers and bee hive springs. Running 1.6 rocker ratio with .595" lift with 264/268 @50. Pretty big for the street and a real pain when I had to bush the lifter bores but what can you *** Got caught up in the big globle credit colapse with the dollar too so it owes me a few more bucks than I wanted it to!!!
Havent got the engine running yet, though the short is done. Cam as big as the one I got will need to breath real deep, so theres a heap of work going into the Eddy's at the moment. I can only hope that my engine runs clean up the rev range without the valve bounce your suffering with. Hughes say their beehive spring solves this sort of drama with heavy weight lifters but we'll just have to see.
Where abouts are you located??  

While I'm on the subject - what oil pan you running in your Charger mate??? I'd love to run the deep morosso (10") but think it would be too radical for the street - hangs 3 inchs under the K frame!!!  

Valiantman, you need to look at the spring rates and comare the 2, chances are you''l find too little pressure between 1.65-1.20 or .300-.500 lift.

I never use less pressure then what the cam manufacturer recommends.
Unless it's off the top and never going to see the top of the rpm/band.  
age is no lock on brillance

Moroso 7 quart - it's fine for my Charger.

Can I asked why you need to bush the lifter bores with a hydraulic roller? I didn't need to for mine (Crane) - I was pretty sure you only needed to do it for solid or solid roller lifters.

Regards the spring rate, if a spring has a higher closed pressure (120lbs vs 112lb recommended) and open pressure (350lb vs 336lb), does that not mean it has a higher spring rate? Or does spring rate not have anything to do with open and closed pressure measurements? The Eddy springs appear to have higher pressures than Crane recommends - but only a bit more.  

This will explain it and save me the time of typing...

http://www.cranecams.com/?show=article&id=15  
age is no lock on brillance

I've emailed Crane about it. Problem is, the Eddy springs are stiff single springs with an installed height of 1.80". Crane recommends a dual spring with an installed height of 1.65" (stock small block heads). While the Eddy springs have good seat pressure and open pressure, the spring rates are vastlty different (90lb difference) because one is longer (Eddy) than the other (Crane recommendation). I think I'll email Edelbrock to find out the valve length before I start ordering and pulling things apart.  

Right on bro, glad to help.  
age is no lock on brillance

Dude, had to bush lifter bores as oil gallery on lifter was slightly exposed at full lift. Dunno if you found this but ma mopar countersunk some of my lifterbores quite deeply, some only a little and some none at all!! Cant find a reason for this but it happened on our Aus engines and also state  side too. Guys at Hughes warned me about it but I was too far down the track with my block to chase up another one. The countersunk lifter bore thing is a bit of a mystrey to them as well but they say plenty are to be found like it!!
Hope you've got your valve bouncing drama's on the way to a solution!
Thanks for the info on the pan too. They rave about the 10" deep morosso on the dyno, but ground clearance would be a massive drama on the street I reckon.  

Hey 3404spd, thanks for the advise. This is a bit embarrassing, but my "valve bounce" problem turned out to be an MSD distributor cap that had started to burn out and was breaking down above 6000rpm (but functioning fine before that). I'll get a new cap and rotor later, which should fix the problem. The reason it took a while to diagnose is the engine is still quite new and I had been running it in, so it was the first time I'd really tried to rev it out. I'm a bit miffed as to why the dizzy cap burnt out so quickly, but it had been lying around for a bit before I put it on the engine.

Other than that, the 408 pulls like a freight train down low and in the mid-range, and should go even better with the new dizzy parts and a bit of tweaking.

charger408, I'm pretty happy with my choice of Crane cam - it idles nicely (a bit choppy, so you know the car means business, but not too rough), drives well down low, and just keeps building power like roller cams do. Yours should make good power. I'll be putting mine on a dyno soon.

For the record, I'm running a Barry Grant 800cfm annular carb, which seems to work well with the engine. No stuttering or flat spots off the line and good power once those secondaries open up - the car usually breaks traction as soon as you put your foot down in 1st, 2nd or 3rd gear (I'm running a 5spd manual).

As for the sump, is the 10" Moroso the same as the 7qt model? Because my 3" twin exhaust pipes touch the ground before anything else on my Charger and the oil pan hardly hangs below the K-frame. I'm planning on doing a rack and pinion conversion next, so it will be interesting to see if I need to swap or modify the sump to clear the rack.

I bought my 408 as a package (the engine builder supplied the block), so didn't have to worry about bushing the bores, as he already had a nice early casting (1971) 360 block lying around for just such an engine.  

Hey Valiantman, thanks for the info on carb choice - I'm  just looking into the fuel system for mine at the moment.
The 10" moroso pan hangs down a mile below the K frame (got the dimensions sent to me from the states) think it might be 8 quart??
What headers are you running on that thing dude?? I've got some off the shelf pacemakers that I had on my sedan but I dont know if they'll end up being a bit restrictive.
By the way, what gearbox you running behind your 408?? I put a TKO 600 tremec in my sedan a few years back and its a real sweet thing! Only problem at the time is that I had to put a fairly stout 360 through a hemi flywheel and 9"clutch which didnt cope too well with hard driving. I've got a bellhousing now to convert to a bigger clutch and hyd throw out bearing but got too busy with the charger to fit it!  

Hi Guys, I'm new to the forum, stumbled across this thread looking for 408 info for my mates Aus Charger ! I have a 360 in a speed boat and we are thinking about swapping. Did you work out if the pacemakers are ok ? I thought they might be too small, although what pipes can you fit on Edelbrocks anyway ? and the TKO transplant is interesting - did you buy a kit or make it all up ? thanks in advance for the info and sorry for so many questions and to distract form the cam choise. Regards Paul