Technical best bang for the buck

When I bought my first set of headers, it was the best $50 I ever spent.

 

and if you are ANYTHING like I was, I bet the VERY FIRST thing you did was go for a drive with them open... I actually used to drive around with a 9/16 and a 1/2 wrench in the glovebox...You just never knew when the mood was gonna strike...

 

Eyes and ears. Reading what others have done, watching experienced builders and listening to what they say. That's why I'm here on the HAMB.

 

I don't know that they are the most bang for the buck, or the first thing I would do when modifying an engine. But anything you do subsequently to increase performance will benefit from them. You are fortunate to have rams horns available as I think they flow pretty well. A set of headers and a jet change will be more than noticeable on the "Butt Dyno" if you are dealing with an FE Ford. Those original low perf. manifolds may be the worst ever for performance use.

 

Who is the dumbass that said his headers would cost 5K!?!?! I want his number ecause I will fab a set for 4k and save him a grand!@

 

It's at the end of the HAMB era, but the exhaust on the Ford GT40 looks like it helped the 289. Maybe a new system would cost five grand. Bob

 

Those old glove boxes were great weren't they?
They held stuff for all different kinds of moods.



.

 

When you're talking about a Model A, the stock engine was 40 HP, so anything you do delivers BIG bang for the bucks! High compression head would be my first choice.

 

Champion Spark Plugs!
A '54 (Ford?) V-8 got an increase of 53%.

 

had two fouled plugs, eh?

 

magnet on the fuel line....

 

gotta keep those ions aligned...

 

Platinum Injection !!
http://www.jalopyjournal.com/forum/threads/platinum-injection.985547/#post-11098150

Hey Lumbergeorge, went to vote on your thread, gonner..

 

too bad, it was actually shaping up a little better than I thought it would, The "screw performance" crowd was running around 30%, lower than I honestly expected...Kinda figured it wouldn't last long...

 

An engine builder that was far more qualified than any of us here, once quoted
"horsepower is the size of the bang! multiplied by the number of bangs per minute"
[Keith Duckworth of Cosworth fame , talking about developing the Ford Kent engine into the FVA]

So you can do all the Freebie things like advancing ignition, removing air cleaners, freeing up exhaust ,getting it to breath blah blah blah ....... but unless you rev the dam thing it wont make much more power.

The Best Bang for the buck is ..................................... proper knowledge![cheaper than stupidity]
My high school teacher told me [40 years ago] that "Knowledge is Power"
who would have thought he was talking about engines

 

Not to single anybody out here but the guy need at quote for a custom build manifold, and the guy need a complicated setup.

I believe it was a 55/56 ford fairline, with a FE 427 and in stainless.

I think he backed out of it too. FYI that's more the 2 month pay for me


EDIT it was for a '67 side oiler FE 427 with tunnel ports
In a 55 Crown Vic, without cutting the cross/x-member. And a stainless header.

 

on any "stock" style motor other than the 1960s -70's performance motors with high flow exhaust manifolds the best thing for performance has been changing to headers ,
specially after EGRs came into the scene as they put restrictions in them to help build a little back pressure for the valve to work properly ,
but basically most problems I have seen are from only doing one item instead of looking over a overall package and then complain they wasted money .
mostly cam changes or headers without retuning the motor for them or adding the proper extensions . most non informed people slap them on and expect them to perform without reading into whats all needed to be done .

as for cheap improvements its porting , but you have to know what your doing as what might work for one brand will slow down another due to valve angles and port angles and airflow.

but the best cheap improvement is to get a book and study your motor as to how/what makes it work before doing anything to your engine .

 

Remove the bumper jack and spare tire, throw the old lady and kids out. Make them stand on the sidewalk and watch your shit.

Free ET!

 

I missed it all together
Crap !

 

Looking at it from the "engine" point of view I think of it as s big air pump, so if I put more air in & it can't get out fast enough & chokes...... The solution is exhaust so free up the spent gasses weither it be headers or duals. If it were based on over all car performance & not underhood I'd go with rear gears, I went from 2.73 to 3.73 in A 4200 lb big block "a" body & it knocked 8 tenths off my 1/4 mile et's & 60 ft times were mega improved. Good thread beaner! Flux

 

and its traditional, too... "Cmon sweetie, outta the car, while I pack this guys lunch"

 

I got in trouble for having a "ditch the bitch, let's go racing!" sticker on my car

 

Yes, and its a great quote, I'm familiar with it. Its really just a more wordy version of P-L-A-N. but that's not really what we are talking about here, we are talking about what is the best bang of the buck on an otherwise stock engine. Spinning a bunch more rpm out of an engine isn't worth much until you put a BIG cam in it, and start porting the heads, then you gotta have the valvetrain and carefully go through the bottom end to support that RPM. I have done the drill a lot of times, and theres nothing cheap and easy about it, so as far as "best bang for the buck" it really doesn't qualify.

 

Some girls have no humor.

(Hope my ol lady don't read this shit.)

 

It wasn't MY ol' lady who gave me shit about it....

 

Rear gear changes in some instances won't really enhance 1/4-mile performance. My brother had a 3700# 2-barrel 350 Pontiac F-body with a stock cam and exhaust manifolds, a cheap 2-1/4"dual exhaust and 2.78 rear cogs running in the 16.40s. We swapped in another rear with 3.55 gears and saw absolutely no difference in 1/4-mile ET.

It wasn't until we installed a decent street cam and added a 4-barrel that the car was able to take advantage of the 3.55 gears, after that it was clicking off 14.80s.

 

Squirrel, like I said, some don't have any humor. Mines pretty good but sometimes I get "the look".

Beaner, I had an OT 1975 car with a smogger 350. It needed a set of heads. Removed all the vacuum lines and smog pump. Bolted on a set of power pack heads, the only spare set I had at the time. New cam and valve job.
The small valve heads, and better compression really woke er up. Pull like crazy from idle to about 4500rpm. Then she kinda fell over. It would spin higher but there wasn't much after. At the time it cost me less than 200 bux to do. Still in the mid 70s it was fast enough to beat a lot a junk in my neighborhood.

 

There used to be a guy in my home town back in the early seventies, he had a jacked up green '68 mustang fastback with this big, bright yellow bumper sticker on the back that said "DRAG ME". Used to make me chuckle every time I saw it. My guess is he got pulled over a lot...

 

seb,

"Don't laugh, real example.. I put a bigger exhaust on my Crosley and can now top one particular hill 7 mph faster than before"

He, He!!

I put a little-bitty glass pack on my 1987 Chevy Sprint ER, 1,000 cc 3-banger corn popper commuter car that had 48hp and I swear I added maybe 2 to 3 hp to it BECAUSE I could feel the difference it made.

I kept it on my car for a couple of years until the drone about drove me nuts and put a stock muffler back on it and lost that 2 to 3hp feel.

pdq67

 

Damn you got me, didn't know I was so fugly. Ran a 292 comp cam, 350 4 bolt, with bowtie heads. 12.20s at the track in a 3600 lb car, shifting at 6200 rpm to stay under the 11.99 roll bar rule. Shifted higher rpm on the street and took out some 11 sec cars.

Never really liked the cam, to take the combo further, would been a roll bar, cam with more lift and a little less duration and split duration, head porting or a new set, 4.30 instead of a 4.11 gear and a new converter.

Back to the topic at hand, tune and test and a way to measure it is the best bang for the buck. When I put the above mentioned car together, rolled out of the garage as a 13.3 sec car. Timing curve, rear and front suspension tuning, rear spring tuning, intake swaps, lots of carb tuning, shift point changes, took over a second out of the car. Launched hard and stuck on the street and strip, lotsa time working out launch and getting it to 60 foot well. A first gen G-tech and some isolated roads allowed me to dial in the combo.

Best bang for the buck, G-Tech to test changes and an owner willing to figure shit out and dial in the car.
http://www.gtechpro.com