850 Camshaft Opinions?

This should be good. What are your preferences for cams on the 850? Not looking for a grenade-prone race cam, but would like to gain some torque in the mid range, if a cam can help there. Running a single Mikuni VM36.

You might want to consider one of Jim's offerings.

http://jsmotorsport.com/products.asp

Scroll down to the cams there is a pull down box within offering different levels of performance.

Megacycle 5600

just went with a WEB cam 312.

With the single Mikuni limiting top end performance, I'm not sure you'll gain much by going to a bigger cam. Most of the benefit from a more radical cam comes at the higher rpm end of the range. And the stock cam is actually pretty good as is. Unless you are making other performance upgrades (head work, higher CR, twin carbs), I don't think you'll find a new cam to make much difference. If you want more low end punch, the single best thing you can do is go for as high a compression ratio as your local gas will allow. You'll feel the low end torque difference immediately. If you do go for a different cam, I'd recommend you stick to the milder grinds, with a bit more lift, but not too much more duration.

Having said that, I must admit that I don't have a lot of experience trying to improve the performance with a single carb setup, so you might look for advice from someone who has done that. Other than a brief period with a single Mikuni on my MK3, all my experience is with twin carbs, and most of that is on race bikes. I have run the WEB 312A (with radiused stock lifters), Norton 2S, and Axtell #3 cams on high performance street bikes, and all three worked well in terms of low speed rideability.

Ken