I agree that canned tunes are typically junk and octane DOES make most of the gains as it allows timing to be cranked up, appx 10hp per degree of timing and about 1 degree timing per point of octane.
As far as gearing, your tire choice dropped your gear ratio appx .25.....example guessing you had a 3.73 gear, with bigger tire you made it effectively 3.48 ish.
If you want easy power, get a E85 flex kit added to your truck. E85 is appx 103-105 octane and power under the curve is significantly increased. You can get a hybrid fuel tune that you tune for both gas and then full E85 and a alcohol sensor constantly measures and adjusts your tune accordingly. Then you can mix any level of gas and E85.
Most gains are at E50 without a huge sacrifice of MPG.
A cam however won’t necessarily kill MPG unless you drive the truck more aggressively all the time, at cruise speeds your MPG might even improve. Factory cams have to worry about emissions compliance and aftermarket cams do not.
My point is, a good cam will gain power (even a good towing cam) without necessarily sacrificing full time MPG. It will only consume more fuel when you are using the increased power under full load, but that’s true on any engine with more power.
The L96 heads are the same ports as the LS3 heads and flow extremely well stock, in fact they flow slightly better than the LSA and LS9 heads used in supercharged applications making much more HP/TQ.
As far as hard part wear related to a cam install, you are looking at a cam with low .500 lift @.050, this is still stock range lifts for an LS engine. If you were in the .600 to .650 lift range, then I would agree you might need to change valve springs every 20k miles.
The exhaust manifolds will handle any towing cam you cam throw at it, again, not a concern until you get some really high lift cams. Plenty of CTSV’s running stock LSA manifolds making 700+hp to the wheel (appx 800 to the crank versus stock of 556).
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