The stock rods with ARP rod bolts in my 2000 360 magnum has seen 6500-7000 RPM lots and lots of times. Going on two years now. Pistons are KB107
Same as mine, except my LAengine was built in 1999.
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With street gears, you can only hit 7000 once on the way to 65 mph, in first gear, and street tires will be spinning; so that will be easy on the engine.. To hit 7000 in 1.45 second gear (automatic) your rear gears would need to be about 5.00.
To shift at 6000, your power peak will need to be about 5700, maybe 5600, and that points to a cam of about 250/255*@.050; which is not very streetable.
IMO, a better idea is a 225ish@.050 cam, which might peak at about 5000, and shift it at about 5300/5400, but set it up so you can wring it out to 6000, when you want to hear her sing.. That way you can still have some bottom-end torque, if you do it right.
IMO, to properly use a high-rpm cam on the street, she really needs an overdrive.
EDIT
But you gotta realize that if you go too steep on the starter gear, yur just trading gears. The break point with a 4-speed, is about .73.. For example, if you start with 3.23s and go to 3.23/.73=4.42s you just traded a fine cruiser gear for a ripper starter gear.
With an automatic the 1-2 split is .59 so that's a big PITA . Your 5.00 optimum second gear turns into something like 5.00/.59= 2.94 in first gear. Bit to run that without being embarrassed might take a 3200 or higher TC.
Furthermore;
If you calculate your on-road horsepower at say every 4 mph, from say 60ft out to 112mph with the optimum gear; and then repeat with any sub-optimum gear, then you will see that you are again just trading horsepower at one road-speed for horsepower at another.
So then, for low ET, it behooves you to have the engine running thru the power peak, between the trap-markers, at the end of the track.
But for a streeter, you don't care about that;
And with an automatic, and a big cam, you can't trap 60mph optimally anyway, so the best idea,
IMO,
is to start with a bigger engine, and just put a nice cruiser gear in it, and a low-rpm cam, and try not blow the tires away.
Let me explain
For a streeter;
Say you had a stout well-engineered 318 with a big cam that power-peaked at 5700, and it made good power over the nose and so you shifted it at 6000. And say you were stuck with a 3-speed automatic with gears of 2.45-1.45-1.00. And this beast hooked reasonably well.
For low-ET, in the zero to 60 contest, you wanna gear this beast to trap at 6000rpm at about 60mph. This will take an overall gear (with an 84"rollout) of 7.95 at zero-slip; say 6.90@15% slip.
Ok so in first gear, you need 6.90/2.45=2.82s, and in second gear you need 6.90/1.45=4.76s. See what I mean? yur not gonna run either of those gears. So your hi-rpm 318 automatic will NEVER trap 60mph optimally. So then say you run a gear half way in between, of say 3.73s. Now you will hit 60 at about 4700 in second gear .
Sooooooo why do you have a 6000 rpm engine in there?
With a powerpeak of 5700, your torque peak might be at near 4200, so by 4700 you are barely on the cam! Say that stout 318 made 350hp at 5700, but at 4700 only 295hp. How much slower would a 318 built to power-peak at 295hp@4700 be, in this zero to 60 contest?
IDK, but with a stop watch on street tires I doubt it will be significant.
Butum
in my thinking, a 360 making 295hp@4700 is easy-peasy; and it will have a mountain more low-end torque, being way more fun to drive, and making better fuel-mileage in the deal.
Butum, because of that torque, you won't need to run the 3.73s any more either! ,nor a 3200TC. Sooo, you can sacrifice a lil ET, for the sake of NVH, and long life by running 3.23s which will get you 60mph=4100 in second. So now, my idea is to run a 4100 rpm powerpeak in the cam,( or a just a bit more,lol) and put the power in the heads instead of in the rpm. 295hp @4100 might be a bit of a stretch, but I think doable, and so you end up with a combo that will go 100,000 miles and break into the 20s mpg. And be a stinking riot to drive, with more torque than the chassis can ever hope to keep up with.
But even if 295hp@4100 is NOT doable; this 360 combo will make a mountain more AVERAGE POWER from zero to 60, and likely still blow the 350hp@5700 318 into last Wednesday.
This is more than theory;
In it's Second iteration, my 367 ran a 223@.050 cam, and by it's trapspeed was making 335 hp. I geared it every which way you could imagine, That 223 cam peaked at a lil less than 5000, and I geared it to hit
60mph at 5140 with 3.55s, in 1.92 Second gear.
And that combo spun 295/50-15s all the way to 60 and beyond.
And that combo made fantastic fuel-mileage.
To make that power, I installed Edelbrock heads at about 11/1 compression, running 185psi cranking cylinder pressure.
I also ran this engine with
4.88s for 60=5150,
now in THIRD gear. But this made first gear almost useless, being 3.09 x4.88=15.08
I never got to comparing ETs between these two on account of 15.08 gear was never gonna work for me, even tho the GVod knocked the hiway gear down to 3.81.
Those 4.88s were in there for less than two days.
I ran several other gears after that, but settled back to the 3.55s.
Now; I'm not laying hate on the stout 318!
I'm just telling you that on the street, for performance, it is almost never about rpm. The dyno curve might look fantastic, when it goes over the nose at 5700; but com'on, no streeter spends more than a few seconds up there, in any week, compared to hours at sub 4000.
So what I did to satisfy my craving for hi rpm, I just installed enough valve spring to go at least 7200, and enough free-breathing that it didn't choke too badly, and installed a GVod, and then hit 65 in FIRST-over, at 7000, splitting that GVod badboy;
Furthermore;
A stout NormallyAspirated 318, power-peaking at 5700, altho hard to build, and even harder to build with a powerful bottom end, can still be a barrel of fun, when running the right TC and gears. It will just be nearly impossible to cruise the hiway with, and will suck gas bigtime.
I highly recommend not to build such a combo.
If you do;
You may end up like me, with a shed full of parts that never worked out.
In your case, I would expect several rear gears, at least two convertors, maybe a trans or two, and eventually, you may convert it to a 4-speed or an overdrive.
I see a nice set of iron heads in there, at least one to three intakes and two or three carbs.
I also see the stock hood in there, swapped for one with a big hole in it to get some fresh air. I see a rad that couldn't keep up, a couple of fans, and a worthless viscous fan clutch. I see a pair of 14x7s, a pair of 15x7s, and a pair of 15 x8.5s. (15x 10s now on the car).. I see axles, chunks, a stock-width 8.75 with it's stock springs, and one or two sets of headers with the under-steering tubes smashed.
And I see a log-book of maybe 300 pages, detailing the hours you spent trying to make this work for street and strip.
And there might be a picture in there of your wife and kids, taken the last Christmas, before she left you.
Do yourself a favor; just drop a stock 5.9Magnum in your chassis, and drive..........
badaBOOM!
