Like I said, take a look at the packages. They'll have all the necessary upgrades to cope with the cam, plus they'll save you a little monet in the long run.
Also, headers might be agood idea. PEMs are good, but they don't totally solve some of the flow problems up front. I don't know how much that matters for an N/A motor, I'll let others chime in on that.

I think headers would be a pretty extreme case for N/A. A nice set of PEMs with a downpipe, h/f cat should be plenty with a cam I would think anyway.

I agree.

I went from PEMs to headers and I can tell you there is a noticible difference in performance.
Being the smallest of the headers, *&* are best n/a. (They have a 2.5" outlet)

But back to the original question.

From my experiance, a cammed n/a L36 seems to be much more picky with the weather. Meaning, if tuned for a certian temp/humidity and driving in another temp/humidity it feels noticibly out of tune.

Mechanical wise, if the install is done right the first time, with the right parts, upkeep shouldn't be any harder.

I did my performance upgrade on the cheap, and I truly believe I haven't lost any reliability at this point. The internals of the L36 have been proven to handle punishment far worse than what I'm dishing out, so I'm really not concerned about hard parts breaking prematurely. Heck, my cam is a regrind, and I've proven on multiple oil changes that there are no more metal shavings in the oil than a stock L36, even after putting 20,000 miles on since the upgrade. The L36 is a tough dragon to slay.

Honestly, the only thing to worry about when you get near the 200whp range is tranny life. My current tranny is tired at 140,000 miles, and putting 30-40 more horsepower through it doesn't help matters. You won't frag your tranny if you go with a cam, but it might wear out quicker.

for all the money/time you would invest wouldnt it be a better Idea just to do an l67 swap?

You're tranny will do fine if you add a cooler and get a PCM. A PCM HELPS you're tranny because it increases line pressure.

The above statement is true with 4T65 transmissions. Not with 4T60'*. In the 60'*, the PCM has no control over line pressure.

A cam and/or mild mods won't really hurt stuff. So what if it blows? Swap in another motor or rebuild.

Crazy, please go back and read the first post in this topic. He doesn't WANT to blow it. So can you post some advice that might be considered remotely on-topic?