There are a lot of people who truly feel a custom camshaft is the only way to get the most out of your combination. But with time and technology advancing, and a majority of engine combinations on the more common end of the spectrum, it only makes sense that at some point, what was once a custom, bespoke cam grind, is now common.

Isky Racing Cams subscribes to this theory. They have taken their extensive internal catalog of custom camshaft profiles and grinds, and consolidated it into a set of highly-specific off-the-shelf part numbers, in order to eliminate the need for a custom cam for a large part of the market. “You’ll be able to go online and pick the cam best matched to your very-specific combination,” says Isky COO and Director of Research and Development, Nolan Jamora.

At this point in the game, many of the applications Isky has manufactured custom grinds for are becoming commonplace. So it only makes sense to turn that custom data into a catalog part number.

“It’s the data from all of the custom cams we’ve done, but are now able to be ordered as a pre-existing part number, not a custom cam, both for naturally aspirated combinations and specific power adders.” By telling the company you have, say, a 376 cubic-inch LS, with 245cc cathedral port heads, and a 76mm turbocharger feeding through a long-runner intake, they can simply reference the grinds they have already had success with in that specific combination, and there you go.

“We have a lot of new grinds coming off the Landis CNC grinder we just bought, with another one coming,” says Jamora. “We’re coming out with a new camshaft in conjunction with Kye Kelly of Street Outlaws, called the Claude Banks cam. We’re actually going to do a whole line of cams off of that.” By making more and more grind options available as existing part numbers, the hope is to take the challenges and costs of a custom cam off the table, while giving customers all the performance of a cam tailored to their specific combination.