Bomber,I know you are a smart guy, but I fail to see your Cordoba point. I'm not the cleverest guy, but I think you missed post #1. He's looking for more starting-line get up and go. Not one single mod you listed will help with that,with the exception of the TC and gears,which has already been mentioned.
The 360s biggest claim to infamy is it's mediocre compression ratio.And IMHO, until that is addressed, all the mods you do to it will be sub-optimum.Band-aids and crutches I call 'em. Sure with the go-fasts,the mid-range can pick up a tad, and the top-end might be a tad less sensitive to lack of compression. But without compression, the NA-engine will always be, soft on the bottom, and sub-optimum everywhere else.
So, on the OP's budget, how does a TC and gears compare to a set of pistons,and in the big picture of things (not quarter-miling), which will offer the most satisfaction in the long run?
TC and gears offer a quick improvement in get-upNgo. The TC has a great seat-of the-pants effect. But once you get into top gear they are done.The engine has to get you down the track and through the traps. Over the years those band-aids will cost you money at every fill up, and the engine longevity will suffer, and so will cruising comfort.
Now, how about the compression boost? Well firstly, the engine will make more torque, and more power.Then,it will return more mpg's, and it will be more responsive to throttle inputs.And then again; instead of requiring race gears and a 2800TC to affect a good "get-up-N-go", it might do quite well on 3.2s and 2600TC, or 3.5s and 2400. Less band-aid, less crutch. In the big picture, of SBM street driving, high compression has a big smile written on it.And finally, every single mod, stacked onto the optimized compression, will return a higher performance increase than the same mod on the low cr. That's got ear-to-ear grin, money in the bank, satisfaction, stamped aaall over it.
I've stacked stuff on LC-SBMs, before. Never again. Since I learned about Dcr, which never got mentioned before about 15years ago,it made a firm believer out of me. Before that, most of us just slapped stuff together in the hopes that it would work, or we hired someone else to do it and hoped he knew how to make it work. When I built my 360 in 99 there were no online Dcr-calculators. I had to work out every single combo longhand, using trigonometry and algebra, and there were no published Dcr targets. I was fully prepared to have to put water-injection on my combo, cuz everyone said 11.2 was too much for pump-gas. Turns out I coulda put even more compression into it.
Every building needs a firm foundation. A house built on a soft ground,will not stand for long.
