300hp to the wheels 318

AustinGriggs said
Wellll... I’ll start with the excuses since that’s standard procedure for falling short of expectations, so here goes... It was hot, but it’s July sooo there’s that; but I had trouble above 5200rpm and after putting a light on it it became clear I had a problem, timing jumping all over the place... we learned it is most likely the distributor cap which is wildly sloppy on the distributor. It’s a petronix unit and I’m gonna have to get that modified or find out if I even have the correct cap altogether... more to come there soon. However, as many predicted it did fall short of 300 to the tire... but only by 6.8 horsepower.... Two Hundred Ninety Three point Two ponies.... I am happy to report it was on the climb still when trouble happened. Come race it Oct 9th at the #MoparVsBrandXstreetcarShowdown!

Very nice! Yeah with correction factor accounting for altitude (or just having it dyno'd near sea level instead of 5500') by Duster would have made around 355 HP at the wheels instead of 285. I do have plans to eventually put a Procharger on it since I put the engine together with Cometic MLS head gaskets and ARP head studs, it's basically waiting for boost and really wants it at this altitude. 9:1 compression with open-chamber Edelbrocks on a stock 5.9L Magnum short block, I run it on regular (85-octane up here, 87 is mid-grade and premium is 91) pump gas currently and it likes it.

Regarding the Pertronix unit I had an Ignitor II in my D200 for a while (originally had points) and it always ran funny until one day just wouldn't start. I replaced it with an Ignitor I unit and now it runs perfectly. Personally I wouldn't run one in a performance car though, Ignitor II and III are designed for more RPM but they seem to be more hit-or-miss with reliability. My Duster has a Mallory HyFire-6A digital CD box (got it back in 2009 before they were bought out by MSD) hooked to a Summit-brand distributor. Previously had it hooked to a factory-style electronic distributor but got tired of the sloppiness in the factory units and how much of a pain it is to modify the mechanical advance curve, the Summit unit is much better in both regards.