So this weekend gone I had an interesting conversation with someone about stud girdles and block limits.
The owner of this car.
I recognized it at a swap meet in my little town far from the city, and spoke to him briefly. (Note: all of the info in these links is pretty old)
He runs a turbocharged 318, stock block, factory crank. Deep in the 9's now with 30psi on pump fuel, using air-water intercooling and a chiller system he made from an old under-dash AC unit.
Years ago on 19psi it made 600whp.
If you do the maths on this, a mild 318 + 30psi running low 9's at 150mph+ in street trim, low stall, highway gears, pump fuel. It has to be somewhere beyond 900hp.
Interestingly, in a previous iteration of the turbo 318 without a girdle he did experienced a main cap failure.
During a drag racing event he noticed the engine was struggling to accelerate at the top end of the track and didnt sound right afterwards.
Upon teardown of the engine, he discovered that one of the main caps had broken into two pieces and he had bent the crankshaft .080" out of concentricity.
In his current build he is using a girdle. It is surviving well so far..
My take away is this
Whatever the horsepower limit of a stock block is, with or without girdle? ...I cannot say.
What I can confirm is this guy runs his 30psi combo on a stock block 318 with full confidence.
He takes it on Sunday family outings 50 miles from home like it's nothing unusual at all... and he does it with a girdle.
