Another 318 set up

-

Dan the man

Well-Known Member
Joined
Aug 1, 2014
Messages
4,898
Reaction score
2,631
Location
missouri
Just sitting here thinking about how many different things can be done to the 318 to improve it's performance. Now this is only something that I thought about while waiting for the wife to get her medicine. Edelbrock AVS2 500 cfm carburetor, performer intake, stock heads with a good 3 angle valve job and bowl work, 1.780" intake/ 1.600 exhaust. Cam, 204* / 214* at 0.050. Stock exhaust manifolds with 2 1/2" exhaust pipes. Curve kit, good coil, chrome box? 3.23's. 2200 - 2500 rpm stall speed converter? Compression from 8.4:1 -9.0 1. Would this make for a fun car to enjoy? Remember, I'm just sitting here thinking
 
Just sitting here thinking about how many different things can be done to the 318 to improve it's performance. Now this is only something that I thought about while waiting for the wife to get her medicine. Edelbrock AVS2 500 cfm carburetor, performer intake, stock heads with a good 3 angle valve job and bowl work, 1.780" intake/ 1.600 exhaust. Cam, 204* / 214* at 0.050. Stock exhaust manifolds with 2 1/2" exhaust pipes. Curve kit, good coil, chrome box? 3.23's. 2200 - 2500 rpm stall speed converter? Compression from 8.4:1 -9.0 1. Would this make for a fun car to enjoy? Remember, I'm just sitting here thinking

Why would you kill the engine with a 500 CFM carb and those small valves?

It appears that in your mind you think that’s going to make a bunch of torque (it doesn’t) and that torque moves the car (it doesn’t).

I’d rethink your philosophy.

And anything under a 3k converter is a waste of money.
 
Why would you kill the engine with a 500 CFM carb and those small valves?

It appears that in your mind you think that’s going to make a bunch of torque (it doesn’t) and that torque moves the car (it doesn’t).

I’d rethink your philosophy.

And anything under a 3k converter is a waste of money.
If torque doesn't doesn't move the car then what does? Almost every performance book says that torque is important for the street as torque gets the car moving and horsepower keeps it there. What size carb and valve's would you go with? I'm probably missing something here but when I looked up cam and converter they recommended nothing more than 2800 for the cam duration at 0.050 that I listed.
 
Why would you kill the engine with a 500 CFM carb and those small valves?

It appears that in your mind you think that’s going to make a bunch of torque (it doesn’t) and that torque moves the car (it doesn’t).

I’d rethink your philosophy.

And anything under a 3k converter is a waste of money.
I just looked up what gets a car moving and all of them said that torque is what gets the car moving. What do you think gets it moving?
 
I did a low budget 318 build a few years ago. Nothing special kb167, a xe250 cam, performer intake, summit 600 carb, summit ready to run distributor, hooked headers. I avoided machine shop charges by using stock bore size and used a .028 head gasket. Heads were just stock 302's. I didn't balance the assembly even though the new pistons were lighter the stock.
On hindsight I probably would have bored it to get the closer wall tolerance of the hypereutectic pistons, and zero decked it in leu of a thinner head gasket, and had it balanced, but then it wouldn't have been relatively cheap.
I used it in a dodge truck for a couple of years. I don't know what the horsepower or torque was, probably upper 200's, but it felt nice and responsive.
 
I just looked up what gets a car moving and all of them said that torque is what gets the car moving. What do you think gets it moving?
Torque AT THE REAR WHEELS. It can be achieved in the engine build, in the rear end gears, and to a point with the torque convertor by altering the stall speed; most often a combination of all three- usually gears, TC, then engine; in that order.
Think of the torquiest thing you can, let's say a medium-duty farm tractor. Can pull anything. Torque. How do they get away with using, say, a 40 hp motor? Gears.
 
I just looked up what gets a car moving and all of them said that torque is what gets the car moving. What do you think gets it moving?

It’s not what I think. It’s what I KNOW.

Horsepower and your gears is what moves the car.

Think it through. If you had a car with a real transmission (stick car) and you put it in 4th gear and see how quick it gets away from a stop light.

It won’t. That’s because no matter how much torque you build, the gears and horsepower moves the car.

Show me a single mathematical equation that uses torque to calculate ET and MPH. You can’t because horsepower is king. To dispute that is silly.

You see Dan, I not only did the reading plus the shop and track work to verify what the magazines back in the day. And they either were stupid or lying because most of the **** they wrote was wrong.

Want some examples?

Set your power valve opening at half idle vacuum. It was wrong the first time it was said. It’s still wrong today. It’s not even a good starting point.

How about the all in by 2500 or 3000 crowd. Or worse, the lock it out crowd.

I just did a BBC. I locked out the distributor so I could find the best curve.

So from locked out to the curve I came up with was 20 hp at peak power but it was close to that from 3400 to peak.

That’s almost a 20 hp average. Just getting the curve correct. But you will have guys defend locking them out or super fast curves like their lives depend on it. And yet it’s wrong.

Just because you read it doesn’t make it correct. You have to get off the couch and go test this ****.

Doing what you want to build torque is just wrong.

If you build a 318 and I build a 318 which one would make more power? Which one would drive better?

You need to find an engine builder who doesn’t agree with you and let him build it.

Torque doesn’t move anything. Choking the engine with a shitty carb that’s too small for a decent 170 inch /6 and using valves that don’t have enough area to feed a decent Briggs & Stratton won’t make more power or torque.
 
Just sitting here thinking about how many different things can be done to the 318 to improve it's performance. Now this is only something that I thought about while waiting for the wife to get her medicine. Edelbrock AVS2 500 cfm carburetor, performer intake, stock heads with a good 3 angle valve job and bowl work, 1.780" intake/ 1.600 exhaust. Cam, 204* / 214* at 0.050. Stock exhaust manifolds with 2 1/2" exhaust pipes. Curve kit, good coil, chrome box? 3.23's. 2200 - 2500 rpm stall speed converter? Compression from 8.4:1 -9.0 1. Would this make for a fun car to enjoy? Remember, I'm just sitting here thinking

Exhaust valves will be 1.50. The best thing you can do is add a cam, double roller timing set and good valve springs. Then a good carb 600cfm or better ( [FOR SALE] - Edelbrock Carb ). Or buy a new or used AFB, AVS, or TQ. Work the heads like you said and mill them so they seal and up the compression. Get a curved distributor. Horse power moves your car. Been running a 273, 4 speed all my life, you would be surprised what it will run. It would take anything near it's size and run with engines up to 100+ cubic inches bigger. I never had to worry about a torque convertor since I had a 4 speed. Call a good transmission shop and talk to them about torque convertors, same with cam companies. But with both, you need to give them particulars about your car and know what you want from your car to get the best recommendation.
 
forget a 500, that's for the slant six guys and dual quad crowd.

say it again with me: carter afb, holley 4150

KISS baby.

also. get a car first.
 
JEEZ! The misinformation I read here is something, and I'm not exactly talking about hotroding. So that should give a clue.
 
If torque doesn't doesn't move the car then what does? Almost every performance book says that torque is important for the street as torque gets the car moving and horsepower keeps it there. What size carb and valve's would you go with? I'm probably missing something here but when I looked up cam and converter they recommended nothing more than 2800 for the cam duration at 0.050 that I listed.
Hp is what moves your car and hp is made from torque and rpm, in a street car rpm is somewhat fixed, peak hp tends to be in the 4500-5500 rpm range give or take so there's a little wiggle room for rpm but torque can very from like 150-700+ lbs-ft so torque will generally have more effect in a street engine.
Why people generally say torque is king, if rpm is fixed more torque equals more hp which is what moves your car.

Hp as a percentage of torque varies with rpm eg. 50% @ 2626 rpm, 100% @ 5252 rpm, 150% @ 7878 rpm, 200% @ 10,504 rpm, to make 400 hp at each of those rpms you'll need 800 lbs-ft @ 2626 rpm, 400 lbs-ft @ rpm, 267 lbs-ft @ 7878 rpm and 200 lbs-ft @ 10,504 rpm.
 
I just looked up what gets a car moving and all of them said that torque is what gets the car moving. What do you think gets it moving?
I your other thread about this, I explained it this way,

Say you got to push your car into the garage, the force applied to the car is basically torque and the foot steps you take are basically rpm, it takes both to move the car you can push on it all day long but until you take a step a your is going nowhere. Pushing and foots steps equals power and power is what's needed to move your car.

Same with an engine torque is a power stroke (pushing), hp is all the power strokes over time in this case time is rpms (steps).
 
What size carb and valve's would you go with?
Basically your talking about airflow and velocity, ultimately you want the ideal size like that header question you had in another thread. Obviously the smallest nor the largest will be it, a lot are so afraid to kill any velocity that they will kill airflow, power is basically airflow over time in other words how much cfm is going through your engine at any given time. So if you want it to make power (torque over time "rpm")
It's got to breath, but problem with a gas engine it's only efficient over a narrow band of rpms why a torque curve has a frown curve for the street engine it generally peaks around 3000-4000 rpms.

The goal is to fill the the cylinders the best you can over a range of rpms eg.. Idle to 5000/5500rpms, A stock low power engine works idle to 4000/4500 rpms the trick is how to gain more usable power 3000 to 5000/5500 rpm without overly effecting idle to 3000 rpms problem is some compromises need to be made.
How much and where is really up to you to figure out, we all would compromise/make choices differently
your re-engineering your drivetrain.
 
Last edited:
Dan asked;
"Would this make for a fun car to enjoy? Remember, I'm just sitting here thinking"
Answer yes it would but;
>You have included too many variables, and
> a lotta stuff you listed, is not needed for your stated purpose and;
> it seems like, you're losing sight of the project.
Yes torque gets the car moving, but the instant it is moving, it takes hp to keep it moving.
Furthermore
If your engine only makes 300 ftlbs at 2000 stall but 340 by 2800, it's a no-brainer where you want to take off at.
And then, there's torque multiplication. Taking off with a starter gear of 2.45 x 2.76 at 300 ftlbs is like 2028ftlbs, which is wet noodle acceleration compared to
2.74 x 3.73 x 340= 3475, which is 71% stronger! There is Nothing you can do to your engine (normally Aspirated) that can get you plus 71% more take off power than gears and stall.
That cam (say a 262* advertised), with no other changes, is likely to DROP your cylinder pressure to 120 from 140, making take-off extremely mushy. That will end up feeling like a peppy slanty.
To get the pressure back to 140, just to the break-even point, will take a compression ratio increase from 8 to 9.
But to get the pressure up to near optimum will take even more compression ratio, say 10/1 for 161 psi
Notta chance would I run a 262/110 advertised cam in an 8/1, 318. The pressure is already piss-poor with the stock cam. With no compression-ratio increase, any cam with a later-closing intake event, that you slide into her will kill the low-rpm torque.
If yur not gonna put decent pistons into her, nor closed chamber heads; then leave the factory cam in her . The only possible other solution is a faster rate of lift, EARLIER closing intake, solid-lifter cam; and better than factory arms, often said to be just 1.42 ratio..
Good luck finding such a cam.

Say it with me; on the street,
Less than 140psi is not worth talking about, cuz
140 psi sucks.
150 psi sucks a lil less
160 psi is a good number for iron heads and a tight-quench
170 psi is about where you want to trade in your iron heads for alloys.
180 is where the torque is
190 is where the power is
200 psi is about the upper limit for alloy heads, carbs, and factory-style ignition systems.

When a person says that torque is king, we are talking about relatively speaking.
At take-off 320 ftlbs is king over 300, but 340 is king over 320. The difference could be just 3>4 hundred rpm, between each data point.

300 ftlbs @2000rpm is 114 hp which sucks for take-off.
320 @ 2400 is 146 hp, that's more like it.
340 at 2800 is 181 hp, Now yur talking!
Put a clutch on it and
360@3600 is 247hp. overkill.

Every hp number has a corresponding torque number, and they are intimately connected, and you cannot talk about one without the other.
But here's what you have to imagine;
a hiway tractor might only make 500 hp at 2200, yet twist out some nasty 1200 ftlb. Go stick your 500hp stroker under that hood, and let's see how long it will survive pulling 80,000 pounds. Torque is king.
Here's an example;
If you want to run 2.45 gears, with off-the-line punch, and not run a very hi-stall, yur gonna need a chitload of torque; and it's gonna come with more than 318 cubes.
but put 4.88s in the back, and with no other changes, it will take-off pretty respectably.

BTW
a 4bbl does not add instant power with increasing rpm. Whatever extra power it makes, it is measured at wide open throttle, and at the rpm of peak power.
But at a stall of 2000 rpm it might not add even 1hp. Even at 2500 it might not add even 1 hp. It will not began to add power until whatever rpm your 2bbl ran out of air. Say your 2bbl on your combo, was good to 3000 rpm. Well that will be when your 4bbl adds it's first single hp. And if your cam peaks at ~4200 like the factory 318 cam does, that will be when the last 1hp gets added. But it will keep right on reving until the valves float.
So then, the 4bbl with a stock cam, is not a whole lotta help, below 3000 rpm. If your car has 2.45 rear gears, then 3000rpm in first gear is about 36mph. With 3.55s that would be 25mph. With 4.30s, it would be 21 mph
As you can see, gears by themselves will not get you into 4bbl territory in any big hurry.
But if you put a 3000 stall on the back, then when you floor the gas-pedal, the secondaries are ready to start working, right away.

Jus trying to help.
Stall and gears is always #1 on the list.
 
Last edited:
Dan you're losing sight of the project.
Yes torque gets the car moving, but the instant it is moving, it takes hp to keep it moving.
Furthermore
If your engine only makes 300 ftlbs at 2000 stall but 340 by 2800, it's a no-brainer where you want to take off at.
And then, there's torque multiplication. Taking off with a starter gear of 2.45 x 2.76 at 300 ftlbs is like 2028ftlbs, which is wet noodle acceleration compared to
2.74 x 3.73 x 340= 3475, which is 71% stronger. There is Nothing you can do to your engine (normally Aspirated) that can get you plus 71% more take off power than gears and stall.
That 214* cam (say 262* advertised), with no other changes, is likely to DROP your cylinder pressure to 120 from 140, making take-off extremely mushy. That will end up feeling like a hi-pressure slanty.
To get the pressure back to 140 will take a compression ratio increase from 8 to 9; just to the break-even point.
But to get the pressure up to near optimum will take even more compression ratio, say 10/1 for 161 psi
Notta chance would I run a 262/110 advertised cam in an 8/1, 318. The pressure is already piss-poor with the stock cam. With no compression-ratio increase, any cam with a later-closing intake event, that you slide into her will kill the low-rpm torque.
If yur not gonna put decent pistons into her, nor closed chamber heads; then leave the factory cam in her . The only possible other solution is a faster rate of lift, EARLIER closing intake, solid-lifter cam; and better than factory arms, often said to be just 1.42 ratio..
Good luck finding such a cam.

Say it with me; on the street,
Less than 140psi is not worth talking about, cuz
140 psi sucks.
150 psi sucks a lil less
160 psi is a good number for iron heads and a tight-quench
170 psi is about where you want to trade in your iron heads for alloys.
180 is where the torque is
190 is where the power is
200 psi is about the upper limit for alloy heads, carbs, and factory-style ignition systems.

When a person says that torque is king, we are talking about relatively speaking.
At take-off 320 ftlbs is king over 300, but 340 is king over 320. The difference could be 3>4 hundred rpm, between each data point.

300 ftlbs @2000rpm is 114 hp which sucks for take-off.
320 @ 2400 is 146 hp, that's more like it.
340 at 2800 is 181 hp, Now yur talking!
Put a clutch on it and
360@3600 is 247hp. overkill.

Every hp number has a corresponding torque number, and they are intimately connected, and you cannot talk about one without the other.
But here's what you have to imagine;
a hiway tractor might only make 500 hp at 2200, yet twist out some nasty 1200 ftlb. Go stick your 500hp stroker under that hood, and let's see how long it will survive pulling 80,000 pounds. Torque is king.
Here's an example;
If you want to run 2.45 gears, with off-the-line punch, and not run a very hi-stall, yur gonna need a chitload of torque; and it's gonna come with more than 318 cubes.
but put 4.88s in the back, and with no other changes, it will take-off pretty respectably.

BTW
a 4bble does not add instant power with increasing rpm. Whatever extra power it makes, it is measured at wide open throttle, and at the rpm of peak power.
But at a stall of 2000 rpm it might not add even 1hp. Even at 2500 it might not add even 1 hp. It will not began to add power until whatever rpm your 2bbl ran out of air. Say your 2bbl on your combo, was good to 3000 rpm. Well that will be when your 4bbl adds it's first single hp. And if your cam peaks at ~4200 like the factory 318 cam does, that will be when the last 1hp gets added. But it will keep right on reving until the valves float.
So then, the 4bbl with a stock cam, is not a whole lotta help, below 3000 rpm. If your car has 2.45 rear gears, then 3000rpm in first gear is about 36mph. With 3.55s that would be 25mph. With 4.30s, it would be 21 mph
As you can see, gears by themselves will not get you into 4bbl territory in any big hurry.
But if you put a 3000 stall on the back, then when you floor the gas-pedal, the secondaries are ready to start working, right away.


RED XXXXXXXXXX
 
Dan do you really even care about performance ? Are you gonna be bombing around town burning rubber at every other light, dropping gear and hammer it every time you think you can get away with ?

Or just cruise around at or below speed limit and the odd time squawk the tires when you leave a light ?
 
Just sitting here thinking about how many different things can be done to the 318 to improve it's performance. Now this is only something that I thought about while waiting for the wife to get her medicine. Edelbrock AVS2 500 cfm carburetor,
Nope, 600 - min
performer intake, stock heads with a good 3 angle valve job and bowl work, 1.780" intake/ 1.600 exhaust.
Nope, 1.88 at the min, 1.60 good
Cam, 204* / 214* at 0.050. Stock exhaust manifolds with 2 1/2" exhaust pipes. Curve kit, good coil, chrome box? 3.23's. 2200 - 2500 rpm stall speed converter?
Dang small cam! 2500 stall is the min. OK with the broom stick cam & gear ratio listed.
Compression from 8.4:1 -9.0 1. Would this make for a fun car to enjoy?
Depends on how he point of view. I’d say no.
Remember, I'm just sitting here thinking
Keep thinking! It’s good for the brain.
 
I think what would more suit you is 80/90's 5.0l mustang/tuned port iroc type thing, which our closest match would be 5.2l/5.9l Magnum, I had a 5.9l Jeep Grand Cherokee Limited, she pull hard in the jeep in a light little A body she would be perfect, could even do a slight cam regrind, mild porting and headers run it with OD and some gears, either with reprogram computer, or sniper or carb, call it a day.

Modern engines try to make power mainly with heads and long intake ports for low rpm torque, the cams they run are pretty small, wrong cam is more likely gonna make a combo have poor drive ability more so then just about any carb heads intake etc.. you would likely run. But doesn't mean you can't run a reasonable cam it's just better to make the majority of your power through other means. Aka top end carb intake heads headers cr etc..
 
Back to post 1...

Yes Dan, your thoughts would make a fine daily driver that has plenty of ''pep'' to around 5200ish rpm's even with the 500 carb.

Not sure what you'll eventually do or want when you get your car, but not everyone needs a street ''hot rod'' as a lot here may think.
 
-
Back
Top