I have a yamaha 350 raptor 05, just piped k an n filter and jetted, and there isnt alot you can do to the 350 raptor to get more power an speed , I was told a hot cam will make a night an day difference, the kind of riding i like to do is climb the biggest hills the raptor can handle, and just going fast on dirt roads an trails i usually take a big hill in 3rd will the cam help with the hills or will i run out of rpms to quickly?

 

a cam will make a good difference in almost everything. of course it will help a lot. You will climp bigger hills, get more hp, and will get up to speed quicker with more power. get it sincei t will help a lot.

 

do you already have an exhaust system? if not you better get one.

 

First, I don't know where you got the idea that you can't do much for the raptor 350 power-wise. There's enough stuff out there to easily make enough power to run down a raptor 660. It'll be expensive as hell, but it's possible.

But the hotcams isn't a great cam. Night and day difference would be a huge exaggeration. It's the most mild cam available in the aftermarket, and they also have a tendency to break the stock valve springs (and you're not supposed to use aftermarket valve springs with them). If you want a cam, you might as well go all the way and get a .430 or .450 webcam, with a set of heavy duty valve springs. That'll cost a little more than the hotcam, and require a little more installation work, but it's well worth it for the difference in results.

 

i have a raptor running with a stage 1 hotcam for about two years now and have had no problems with springs breaking and ive never heard of that happenning but thats up to you

 

Well, first, it doesn't look like you have a raptor 350. But the reason the stock valve springs break is because they're designed to be durable under the conditions the stock cam puts on them. Use them with an aftermarket cam, and those springs get forced farther than they were designed to. It's not going to happen over the course of a few hours of riding, but eventually they can snap. Raptor 350s haven't been around that long to see it happen often, but it's the same engine as the warrior, and it happens to them more often than it should, especially after it's been in there for a while. Not only that, but the higher lift with those weak stock springs make it a very easy thing to float the valves. It's not all that hard to float the valves even with the stock cam, what would you expect with a higher lift? There's a reason all the other cam companies say specifically "not for use with stock valve springs"

But bottom line, the hotcam stage one is only a slight gain over stock, I don't know if the average rider would even feel a difference in power. You get a lot more out of a cam that has a high lift. As they say, go big or go home.

And one more thing to add, back when the raptor 350 came out, hotcams didn't do their research, and just relabeled warriror hotcams as for the raptor 350. The valvetrain isn't quite the same. Well, a lot of raptors ended up with messed up engines before they were taken off the shelves. You might think, well a decent company would recall their product after realizing the problem. Well, nope, hotcams apparently isn't that decent of a company, and left their customers hanging with useless cams and destroyed top ends. There is probably still be a few of the bad cams floating around, and I pity the person that ends up with one.