Power advantage between Ford 351, Mopar 340 and Chevy 350??

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Ford failed to learn the lesson that big ports don't work & repeated it with the Boss 429 engine. The 429 was built with huge ports to beat the big, bad Hemi. Didn't quite work out that way. Performance in production cars was nothing to write home about & on the track, not much better.
Roger Huntington had this to say about the 429 in American Supercars:
'Big ports made the low end & mid-range weak'.....'The street Boss 429 didn't perform really well anywhere in the speed range'.
'All else being equal, the Street Hemi could get up to 60 mph 1-1.5 seconds quicker' [ than the street Boss ].
On the speedways, the Boss was quicker on the long ccts, but the Hemi was quicker on the shorter ccts.
 
Post #128 & others who love Hemis.
Did you know these facts?
[1] Development started in July 63, with The Feb 64 Daytona planned as the debut race. That is a veeeeeeery short time frame to develop an engine to win a gruelling 500 mile race...
[2] Not only did the Hemi finish it's inaugural race, but it won the first for places
[3] In testing, the engines were cracking bores. The problem was traced to core shift. New blocks were hurriedly cast. The engine that came first had a block that was cast just 13 days before the race!
[4] The track engine was making about 550 hp, big for 1964. A FI version made about 650 hp.
[5] A 1964 magazine had this banner headline: ''Chrysler engineers unveil a set of heads that will out breath anything ever put on an American engine before'.
 
Many of the SBs were put through their paces here, results published in Top Aussie Supercars.

351 Cleveland v 340. "We managed 15.5s in the Charger, while the Falcon was battling to break 16 seconds". "The 340 is definitely smoother at high revs & it doesn't have the 351s tendency to lose it's tune after hard use..."

350 Chev in a 3240 lb car, 275 hp, QJ carb. Best 1/4 mile was 15.8 sec.

The locally grown Holden SL/R 5000, with the Holden[ GM ] 308 V8 engine, was a thinly disguised race car. Weighed just 2610 lb. 15.8 1/4 mile.

The fastest car tested....drum roll....was a Val Charger with the 265 cu in inline 6, triple Webers, 302 hp. It ran a 14.4 1/4 mile. Silky smooth engine, pent roof combustion chambers. Chrys engineering at it's best. Road Tester's comment:"...you can drive around town at a steady 1500 rpm-30mph-& never feel the need to change down unless you want hard acceleration". Fastest run was 132 mph.
It beat the Ford Falcon Phase 3 HO with a 351 C. 14.7 1/4 mile. This thinly veiled race car was a pig on the street, & fools dribbled at the mouth over it; in the US it would have option box ticks for a 4 door car. This car had 'better' manners than the Phase 2, & the road testers had this comment: " It will crawl along from 1500 rpm in top, although of course, such a high compression 11 to one engine doesn't entirely hide it's displeasure. This sort of low speed flexibility was non-existent in the old car; it bucked & shook at 40 or below"
 
All that magazine testing but unfortunately still no winning where it counted.
Sounds like they needed to get the Stig to drive those cars.:)
For all the money they spent on that 6 cylinder, they may as well have just put a 4bbl on the 318..
 
rumblefish360 said:
If you made everything as even as possible, it comes down to air flow in and out with the key to these engines being the cylinder heads.

If you take advantage of our .904 lifter diameter where the other two can not, you would have a good edge in what is otherwise all as delivered stock engines for this comparison.

The Ford Cleveland 4V head is that engines strong point which pretty much buries everyone else’s head. That would be a tough one to overcome on a “A Cast Head.”
Click to expand...
I had the MP Engine book in the very early 90s. Even Mopar said the 351C out flowed the Mighty 426 Hemi Heads, as cast..... they had a comparison chart in the book
 
Ironracer said:
I had the MP Engine book in the very early 90s. Even Mopar said the 351C out flowed the Mighty 426 Hemi Heads, as cast..... they had a comparison chart in the book
Click to expand...
In the B/RB book?
 
Whew this turned into an epic flame war sweet!

I like all the engines. I think the Cleveland is neat. I think the boss302 is neat. The 340 is cool. And the Chevy.... you can build a freaking monster of an engine out of a sb Chevy hard to argue with that aftermarket support.

I don't know why people get so up in arms. All these factory engines had shortcomings, especially from the 50s-70s. They're still cool, they all still respond to the same stuff which is what is so fun.

And as far as history is concerned, I can tell you that whatever you think about "your side" and "their side", reality was probably somewhere in between the extremes. Be happy your genepool made it through all the wars.
 
I don't trust old school magazine quarter mile numbers. Look at what those guys were working with for tires. And those production cars were so saddled with all kinds of BS from the factory that made them slower and heavier than they would have been in the hands of a decent tuner.

Just look at what basic cam heads and intake mods do to a factory car, even from that era. You can make a lot more power pretty easy. Go watch the Richard Holdener video where he mods a Mopar 360 out of a 70s era dodge van. He makes damn good power with very modest upgrades.
 
Mean416 said:
I don't trust old school magazine quarter mile numbers. Look at what those guys were working with for tires. And those production cars were so saddled with all kinds of BS from the factory that made them slower and heavier than they would have been in the hands of a decent tuner.

Just look at what basic cam heads and intake mods do to a factory car, even from that era. You can make a lot more power pretty easy. Go watch the Richard Holdener video where he mods a Mopar 360 out of a 70s era dodge van. He makes damn good power with very modest upgrades.
Click to expand...


That’s why you ignore the ET and look at the MPH. MPH is horsepower is and that’s what matters.
 
Mean416 said:
Whew this turned into an epic flame war sweet!

I like all the engines. I think the Cleveland is neat. I think the boss302 is neat. The 340 is cool. And the Chevy.... you can build a freaking monster of an engine out of a sb Chevy hard to argue with that aftermarket support.

I don't know why people get so up in arms. All these factory engines had shortcomings, especially from the 50s-70s. They're still cool, they all still respond to the same stuff which is what is so fun.

And as far as history is concerned, I can tell you that whatever you think about "your side" and "their side", reality was probably somewhere in between the extremes. Be happy your genepool made it through all the wars.
Click to expand...
I'm all cool about it. If it's old and American, I like it. I prefer Mopar, but I'm not a snob at all. I love the 73-79 Ford truck platform. I have one.
 
Mean416 said:
I don't trust old school magazine quarter mile numbers. Look at what those guys were working with for tires. And those production cars were so saddled with all kinds of BS from the factory that made them slower and heavier than they would have been in the hands of a decent tuner.

Just look at what basic cam heads and intake mods do to a factory car, even from that era. You can make a lot more power pretty easy. Go watch the Richard Holdener video where he mods a Mopar 360 out of a 70s era dodge van. He makes damn good power with very modest upgrades.
Click to expand...


You know the manufacturers would sometimes roll in with a "ringer" car to do magazine testing.

One thing that always stands out, Mr. bastid points out, the mph on the lower HP 340 compared to the higher rated hp chevy. those chevies must have weighed a bunch, or they were overrated and/or mopar underrated the 340. :)

70 LT1 Z28 4.10/auto car ran something like 100mph and 14.2ish in the 1/4 during a test IIRC. About the same as the Mopar posted earlier in the thread. Hmmmm
 
crackedback said:
You know the manufacturers would sometimes roll in with a "ringer" car to do magazine testing.

One thing that always stands out, Mr. bastid points out, the mph on the lower HP 340 compared to the higher rated hp chevy. those chevies must have weighed a bunch, or they were overrated and/or mopar underrated the 340. :)

70 LT1 Z28 4.10/auto car ran something like 100mph and 14.2ish in the 1/4 during a test IIRC. About the same as the Mopar posted earlier in the thread. Hmmmm
Click to expand...

340s were overrated. Back in the day NHRA re-rated them at 310 gross HP for stock classes up from the factory 275 (from what I've read and seen, I wasn't around then lol). Also if you look at the drop in HP from gross to net in 1972 the 340 "lost" a lot less HP than other engines. Went from 275 gross to 240 net while engines like the 440 4-bbl went all the way from 370 gross to 280 net. Chevrolet tended to overrate their engines' power, if I remember my "history" (old racing stories) correctly a 396 Chevy rated at 325 HP was no match for a 340 A-body at similar weights and probably even if the Chevy had a weight advantage.

One engine I wish had more road-testing done is the Buick 455, gaaahhd I love those things. I will own a Buick with that engine some day, whether it's a Riviera, Skylark/GS, even an Electra. TBH my top dream classic car right now is a 1967 Riviera with the 430 BB, first year for that engine platform. Or a 1965 with the later BB swapped in. Mopar never made anything quite that beautiful or built as well unless maybe you got an Imperial.
 
I just care less about brands and more about fundamentals as I grow older.

My first car was a mustang with a 351 with 2v heads. It was fast. I had Ford loyalty for awhile.

These days I gravitate towards mopars. I don't know, they're just cool. I had a friend with a barracuda in high school and that's an influence to this day.

Now I realize, with gas burners, it really boils down to, cubic inches, and, air flow. Everything else is icing on the cake.
 
Mean416 said:
I just care less about brands and more about fundamentals as I grow older.

My first car was a mustang with a 351 with 2v heads. It was fast. I had Ford loyalty for awhile.

These days I gravitate towards mopars. I don't know, they're just cool. I had a friend with a barracuda in high school and that's an influence to this day.

Now I realize, with gas burners, it really boils down to, cubic inches, and, air flow. Everything else is icing on the cake.
Click to expand...


I will say the biggest part of learning how to make horsepower is to move airflow way down in the priority list. Cubic inches too. You have to learn that the magazines and now YouTube are full of guys repeating **** they heard years ago.
 
Mr Goodwrench had the upper hand with the 70 LT1 350.
 
A lot of what's on YouTube is garbage for sure. But not all of it is garbage.
 
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