Technical best bang for the buck

Move the seat up a few notches. Install a lighter throttle return spring. Done.

 

A cam

 

The whole point of my RPM comment was to start looking for the cheap mechanical advantage. which is torque multiplication
Most cars can handle a drop in the gear ratio's so they can rev a bit higher without any modifications.
If you don't believe that , jump in your car and beat it up the road while holding it back in the gears.

There is no point going through the traps in 2nd gear [in an Auto], the car should be near it's limiter in top gear.
The mechanical advantage is the torque multiplication at the first part of the run [not at the top end]
Every time you double the speed you need four times the power [basic physics] so it is cheaper to get gains in the first 60' than the last 60' on the quarter.

At 115mph through the traps with 28" tall tyres and 4.30 gears, the engine is only turning 6000 RPM
most [after 1955] engines can spin this fast under load without modifications

Tyres then rear end gears are the cheapest gains.

 

see, that's my problem...I'm going 130

 

I forgot to add this.

You want to go fast.........

 

Cam is really a ways down the list Fter the first four I mentioned, if you are starting with a 4bbl stocker, and if its an auto, its cam/converter, together imo.
As a matter of fact, a few decades ago, I remember an aquaintence of mine with an LS-5 monte carlo tearing a few guys up with headers, curve, a converter,4.88s and 9x30 slicks, engine was bone stock. And we were a pretty rough crowd. solid Mid 12s with a bone stock, lowpo oval port hyd cam 454 in a heavy car...

 

I'm with salt flats. I put the cold air induction that was removed, back in the afx hood on my 65 Comet and couldn't believe I got .4 tenths in the 1/4

 

Been cruising around Newton have you George ? (sorry, couldn't resist lol)

 

My wifes salon is there, man, you gotta see some of the "action" on the street behind our mall... Honestly, since they have moved city hall to Whalley, all that uh "stuff" has moved south to Newton. We live in North Surrey, so the property value of our house has gone up, but the resale on our business has gone into the toilet. Win some lose some...

 

Well said , each ride has its own best "bang" solution. My old 69 350 HO "bird" had 3.55 gears & like most poncho's , it would've been just as well off letting the pontiacs monster torque turn 2.73 - 3.08 cogs. But the ol' 454 in my "a" body responded more than well with the full point higher change in gear. I was always amazed at how many Pontiac powered 1/4 mile monsters ran gearing in the 3 series ratios while most other brands hovered in the 4 series. Flux

 

Damn 4 pages. I got an appointment this morning so it'll be after noon before I can filter all this information But I'll bet its good and hopefully humorous.

 

I remember when Car Craft put a 471 on a pretty much stock 350 smog motor and it put there early 30s Ford pickup deep onto the 11s.

 

that was PHR, Leonard Emauluson (sp?). And it had 4.88's in it IIRC, that probably helped a little(understatement of the century there)...

 

Well you can discount the carb and intake if you bought a guy that read all the BS in an old hot rod magazine and was already running a carb and intake for a hot rod on an otherwise stock motor.

its a conundrum as not single change is going to make a rocket out of a stone but some things do help more then others. Sometimes it is cheaper to just snag someone else's cast off motor.

Maybe this is a @RichFox or an @Atwater Mike question but it seems to me like the older guys used to talk about putting a divider in the center exhaust port on a flatty. That is over and above the open exhaust theory but it wouldn't cost much.

 

Putting a blower on something isn't cheap, but it is very cost effective.

 

I think that while a blower is a "bolt on" part many people overlook what it takes to bolt one on and make it run. There is a lot of planning that needs to go into one, like how much boost, how you are going to feed it and etc.

 

Yup, fuel, cooling, drivetrain strength, compression, cam, etc all have to work together. But when it's right, it's worth it.

 

So how about blocking the exhaust cross over in the intake and add one of the valley pan baffles to keep the hot oil off the bottom of the intake.
I don't have any real world testing on this one yet but it has to help and maybe one of them cool cans to cool your fuel.

 

"Some people" have been known to spray intake manifolds with aerosol liquids known to have a low latent temp of evaporation just before the next round, like oh say, brake clean for instance...But NHRA frowns on such tactics, so I wouldn't really know anything about that...Nudge, nudge, wink, wink...

 

^^^ there you go have all the ice packs laying on the manifold
Could make for some tricky tuning.

 

I'd say 6v71 since they can be had for $100 and with a welder and some home machine work can be bolted to anything. Gear ratio would be up there for a bolt in part but i guess it all depends on the motor, sometimes all it takes is breaking out the flycutter and chomping some meat off the heads, which can be done for the cost of headgaskets

Actually can i take that back? How about a bridgeport and a lathe, since using only those you can literally build any drivetrain you ever wanted from scrap metal.

 

I thought about a center divider in the Packard engine. I really should have done something along those lines. The dividers they sold for flatheads always seemed to be a restriction to me. John Bradley or Jimmy Stevens would know more about that. On blown Chrysler nostalgia motors and others, the center exhaust ports on each head are connected through the heat riser port. This is thought by some to contribute to the occasional blower lift. I filled several of them by melting aluminum and pouring it into the port. thus blocking it very cheaply. Cut down on the can recycling money a little.

 

LOL me and the *schoolster built a 25CC all aluminum air cooled 4 stroke single that runs on nitro from scrap in the shop. The only piece we didn't build was the piston rings and the glow plug to get it started. We used a lathe and a brigeport milling machine and a dremel tool. Its usless but its cool to light it off on the bench. its like a great big gas plane motor.

But we haven't tried to do a real motor yet.

The Raven has an intake that I modified to work on my 355 on his 305. its a late model quadrajet intake from a Chevy truck a 15 dollar U pull it special. I guess it would be cheap HP if you knew what to do to it and you already had an engine to support it. its really too much intake for the 305 though.

*The Schoolster is an old racing buddy and machinist that I used to work with.

 

because you left the kids in the baby seats in the back seat ... but they didn't under stand you needed the extra 50 pounds for traction

 

some of the late non egr 1970's chevy truck 's used a higher plenum manifolds on the 20-30 series trucks as they also had the high 3 and mid 4 series gears ( my k-20 had 4:56's ) and the room to use them , the manifold on my K-20 350 when put on the chevelle the hood would not close until I used a deep dish aircleaner , but you could tell the difference with the butt dyno and also at the track with time slips , later I found out its basically the same design that e brock uses for there aluminum ones . it was one of the best secrets the cheap racer crowd told me to use .

 

You gain a TON with most stock cast iron 4v intakes, regardless of make, by milling out most of the septum and radiusing the tops of the runners as they turn into the plenum.

 

Whatever it is,tuning is one key,but tire,gear, an lite car is bigger gains. Most hotrods{open wheel] are only around 2000lbs with avg. of lets say 7in. to 9in. wide rear rubber and can smoke those in to junk with nearly any stock V8 tunned right,so much so that having even more HP is just more fun for your brain then actully going faster.

 

Tuning-free (or almost). Lightening the vehicle by removing unnecessary stuff-free.

 

Dana, I gotta get you up to speed on m/t drag radials. It'll be a life-changing experience for you... If your ever in the Greater Vancouver area, we'll go for a drive...

 

My hot rod mentor taught me to make one change at a time and record the result(s). Doing so showed me the biggest bang for the buck. Porting and tuning definitely are at the top of my list. peace