Hot Rod 340 builds and dyno test.
Yep! Ya screwed up! LOL The bottom line I think is who really cares about maximum horsepower. If you are class racing then you will pay thousands $$$ for just a dozen ponies. ET racing doesn't care either. but everybody want's a good running engine that can smoke some tires when you want. Add headers if you want more and don't mind the price and what it takes to install. ETC.
I agree. Where were you in 1999,lol, when I needed that sage-ism..
After The 292/508 debacle, I had a rude awakening; lots of power from 5000 to 6500plus, is super great .......when you're speed is such that you're in that zone......which with 3.55s is from 43mph to 55, in first gear.......And 95% of the time I was never there. The problem was getting up to 43 mph. And the 292 cam is not real helpful down there. 3.91s would have brought the numbers to 39 to 51.
So after moving it twice, I realized chasing a horsepower number might not have been one of my better ideas.( Yeah I know it wanted a deeper starter gear, but doing the math, I decided a new smaller cam was a better option for me.)
So then I chased torque instead, with a 223/230/110 @.050 cam. And that combo was by far my favorite for my application. I spent a lot of time and money fitting that gang-busters engine to my driving style, and in the end, I was very sad;
when, one day she dropped 2 lobes.
And enter the current cam; 230/237/110; a reasonable compromise,I thought,
A reasonable amount of torque from right off idle,in a stick-car, makes for a way more fun driver.You don't need BB type torque either, as I found out. Too much just eats rubber. My 230 cam dropped a lot of very-low rpm torque compared to that 223 cam. I know it's only 1 cam-size; but for the longest time I was very disappointed, and spent a lotta time trying to get some of it back. But the boost at the top was also unexpected, as it rivaled the 292/108. So, in the end,IMO, with the 3.09 low gear,it was a good compromise. .......except it sucks gas bigtime.