.480/230 cam in an 8.5 CR 360?

Newbomb Turk said
I’m convinced it will run relatively well.

But this forum and multiple others are FULL of guys complaining about “soft bottom end” and things like that.

It’s rampant.

I’m not a Freiberger type who thinks just getting it running is the cats ***. It may be if you are building multiple cars for a tv channel, but for something you want to drive and not keep screwing with you fix it.

In the grand scheme of things a change of cams is relatively inexpensive. It’s far cheaper than trying to get the compression up.

I don’t step over donuts to grab a dog turd, isn’t my way.

Just because you have something doesn’t make it worth using.

Next up, the OP will need a different converter and more gear to get it correct.

I looked at what rolling the cam to a 103 ICL. The overlap triangle gets murdered.

You can do it, but if the OP found something with 10 less degrees duration and put the LSA at 106 he’d be far better off IMO.

I don't disagree with any of your points. That said, the fact is, we could pick apart one of your builds and point to where you could get more power. You always leave something on the table with every single build. I'm not advocating inefficient builds here, I'm simply saying there's nothing wrong with using what's there and building and tuning it to be optimal for what it is. That's kinda what we do with all builds anyway.