as do i... but that's the boring choice. and i like to be difficult just for the sake of it.
besides a wheeze bag 273 that's not gonna see the high side of 5K? that's the perfect vessel!
Exactly;
I have a very nice 360 combo that goes 93 in the 660, and pulls to well past 7000, yet;
for the vast majority of time, it is at under 3500.
I'd bet it spends more time at under 2000 rpm than at over 5000.
For a streeter, dyno hp doesn't mean much. For most of us we only pull thru the Power peak but one time, before we are speeding. For instance, my 3.55s and 4-speed hit 65 in Second at 5500, on a cam that peaks around there, and at WOT, the tires may still be spinning.
7000 gets me near 85mph. On the two-three shift, the engine drops back to peak power, and if the tires break loose, she's gunna jump back to 7000 .....
But you know how often this happens?
Well,
She went to the track one day, and I ran her 4 runs.
Two runs were incompletes.
On a third, the timers didn't work in my lane.
On the Fourth run, everything came together for 93 in the 660.
Time wise, I live 20 minutes from the nearest town, so, the engine is at 60=2070, in overdrive., for some 40 minutes every time it goes out. and once I get to where I'm going, the town speed limit is 30mph. She spends a lot of time just idling around at 550rpm = 4mph.
So, why do I have a 5500rpm powerpeak?
Why indeed.
Like most guys, I aimed too high. But, at least I did it right with cylinder pressures from 185 to near 200, depending on which cam I was running; so, except for the 292 cam I started with, my 367 has always had a strong bottom end. That's what makes an engine fun, as opposed to 93 in the 660, once every 10 to 20 years.
**
Bottom line is this, build your combo for torque in the zone that she will spend the most amount of time, and you will be a happy guy.
Btw;
back in the mid 70s, I ran that 273/318 cam in a hi-compression 340, with a 318 top-end, an automatic, and 3.23s, in a 65 Valiant Wagon ; and I still remember that combo with much fondness. As far as street combo's go, that's probably my favorite all time combo.
The point is this; in a 340 hi-Compression, that cam was awesome.
If your 273 (or 318) is down on power, don't blame the factory cam right away. Sometimes I think about installing that cam, or a 360 2bbl-cam, into my HotRod, and I've been waiting for over a decade for the current 230/110 cam to die, so I can justify pulling it out, but it just keeps on ticking ..... The 360 cam would jump my pressure to 200 on the nose. Shazzam!! talk about bottom end.