$ Building a Slant 6 for performance

A true performance focused enthusiast will have to determine what power level they are after. A 500 HP slant isn't doing it without help, Ie. a turbo or a good shot of nitrous. A 500 HP V-8 will require some serious mods, but is less likely to require "help".

What most people consider a performance Slant is well under 500 HP. 300 is a lot harder to get than most Slanters are willing to accept. Just bolting a header and 4 bbl on a stock Slant won't get you there. Bolting a set of headers and 4 bbl on a 440 will get you much farther. It's just cubic inches. You build a Slant because you want to, not for ultimate performance. Anything done to a Slant will garner bigger numbers when applied to a bigger engine. Physics suck, but there it is. I have done 2 "performance" Slants, and don't regret either, but I know their limitations. I would love to do a Turbo slant someday.

A quick example: I put a bone stock, 60,000 mile '65 383 2 bbl engine in a '72 Valiant 4 door. I added a stock intake, and a 600 cfm 4 bbl. carb with no tuning. 2" soda straw exhaust off the tiny log manifolds. Factory single point ignition, with no tuning. Stock trans with 120,000+ miles. 2.76 rear gears. Car weighed over 3,400 pounds with me in it. It ran in the 14's at over 95 Mph. using only 1st and second gear, and I drove it daily for 4 years. How many mods would it take to do that with a Slant? Plenty. I paid $100 for that 383, and still have it.

Build a slant to be different, and to be cool. Expect to spend some extra dollars if you want to go fast.