[blykins]

That will be a good head for a road race car if you have the cam and intake to back it up.

Here's some answers for you:

1. You can't really see how a new cam will interact with the pistons until you get the new cam installed. Due to the valve timing events, one cam may get close while another cam may be a little further out. You can get a general idea by checking valve/piston clearance with the current cam. Since it's an E303 cam, you know the lift. Check the P/V clearance and you can get a general idea for how much lift you can shoot for. If the pistons came with the stroker kit, you could probably assume that they will take some lift....probably close to .600". This will vary of course depending on how the pistons are made....domed, flat, dish, etc.

2. You will need a nicely sized cam to take advantage of the flow from the AFR heads. For off the shelf hydraulic rollers, I like to use Comp's XFI series. They are designed for strokers and I think that it would be a good choice for you. Since you don't want to turn any higher than 6500, I would look at the XFI236HR-14. I sell Jones Racing cams and if you wanted a custom camshaft for your application, we could talk further about that.

3. Set up your camshaft first. Degree it and time it the way you want. Once you set the cam timing and degree it to double check it, then you can check piston/valve clearance. Since P/V clearances change when you advance (intake valve clearance goes away, exhaust clearance grows) or retard (intake valve clearance grows, exhaust goes away), then you must set the cam timing first. When you get that set then you can check your piston valve clearance with an adjustable length checking pushrod. You set them to different lengths and then you can see what length works best. It's best to use a solid roller lifter when you check p/v clearance so that you get an accurate result. Either that, or bottom out the plunger on the hydraulic lifter so that the plunger doesn't mess with your results. Use clay to check radial valve clearance and it's best to use a dial indicator/mag base to check depth clearance.

4. It's hard to get a very accurate compression ratio calculation without knowing the piston volumes and how far the pistons are below deck at TDC. I suppose you could backwards solve to get it, but I'd feel a lot better to have all the numbers.

For a strictly race application, I'd look at a solid roller camshaft. Then you don't have to worry about valve float at higher rpms.