The Mighty 396...NOT!

-
pishta

pishta

I know I'm right....
Joined
Oct 13, 2004
Messages
23,824
Reaction score
13,683
Location
Tustin, CA
I was looking up something and came across this EFI build up of a 396 motor in an El Camino. Mind you this is a 396 big block Chevy with some basic speed bolt ons:

"... '70 Chevy El Camino SS 396 with cowl-induction. ... aftermarket manifold, an Edelbrock 650-cfm carburetor, a Crower street cam with 276-degrees duration and .518-inch lift, plus headers..."

Ok so far so Generic chevy big block. So they take a baseline dyno pull and come up with a whopping PEAK HP of 211@4700 RPM. Damn, that is some WEAK sauce! And they managed to squeeze 238 HP out of it with 314 ft/lbs torque topping the chart. That's less than a stock pre 70 318! Chevy Rat power!
 
hmm i dont buy that.. we have no idea what the compression is first of, and being a 70 that should be a 401/402 motor if i recall.
 
Somethin is seriously wrong, is this at 25,000 ft altitude 'er somethin, LOL?

Link to the slaughter?
 
805moparkid said:
hmm i dont buy that.. we have no idea what the compression is first of, and being a 70 that should be a 401/402 motor if i recall.
Click to expand...

It's a 402 in 1970.

That carb is kind of small for that motor and it that an engine or chassis dyno?

Also how can it be a 650 carb when it clearly says in the beginning EFI build. So which is it carb or EFI?
 
I had a 71 402 I blueprinted to 68 325 HP 396 specs in a 69 Nova with 3.08 gears. It went 13.30s on slicks. Don't know what power it had but it was a spunky little car.
 
1968FormulaS340 said:
You can tune anything to make little or no power. I bet I could get a 426 Hemi to only pull 210hp if I really tried.
Click to expand...

Yeah, but wouldn't THAT be an epic fail? The big block chebbie is one of the easiest GM engines to get good power out of. Somebody was retarded. No offense to retarded people.
 
RustyRatRod said:
Yeah, but wouldn't THAT be an epic fail? The big block chebbie is one of the easiest GM engines to get good power out of. Somebody was retarded. No offense to retarded people.
Click to expand...

Well, Mopar managed to squeeze only 220hp/345 torque out of a '74 440 4bbl in CA trim...epic fail!
 
pishta said:
Well, Mopar managed to squeeze only 220hp/345 torque out of a '74 440 4bbl in CA trim...epic fail!
Click to expand...

Agreed, but the 396 and 402 were made in a tie when compression still existed. lol
 
Remember the NET vs GROSS HP ratings in 71 vs 72 to present.

250 net HP today is 300 gross hp to most engine bbuilders.
 
Thats it? shoot my '98 Stratus has a 2.4 L4 engine in it and with no modifications gets 150 HP. Something is seriously wrong with this 396.
 
Well, that parasitic loss is huge. Looking further into it, there is an article that takes old vs new power ratings (engine stand and and chassis dyno) and basically boils down to roughly a 30% drag to the wheels on a ford small block w/aod trans. And The aod is actually on the low side for drag. They got 230 at the wheels, close to that 396, and the motor alone was at 325. The 5 blade rigid coupled fan cost almost 20 hp. That poor ford with everything hooked up lost 41% of its motors hp at a certain rpm. So real world numbers on a chassis may be a real wake up call for bench racers across all brands. Manual trans and clutch fans! 904 was 20 hp lighter than a 727 at 25 and 45, the champ oem was the powerglide at 18. C6 was the worst.
 
By "lighter", do you mean less loss?

Also remember today's engines are more effiecient. Even my partially "old school" 5.9 makes net HP numbers somewhere between a 74 400 and 440! With the same 8.2-ish comp ratio!

I've always said a complrably equipped 383 can pretty much always take a 396, those 13 cubes be damned!
(19 if it's really a 402- and WTF is that marketing/badging all about?)

It's simply a better design.

Isn't the 396 one of those motors that was designed as a truck motor (348, 361, 390, etc)? While the 383 was a pass car (and even HP pass car) from the start.
 
YY1 said:
By "lighter", do you mean less loss?

Also remember today's engines are more effiecient. Even my partially "old school" 5.9 makes net HP numbers somewhere between a 74 400 and 440! With the same 8.2-ish comp ratio!

I've always said a complrably equipped 383 can pretty much always take a 396, those 13 cubes be damned!
(19 if it's really a 402- and WTF is that marketing/badging all about?)

It's simply a better design.

Isn't the 396 one of those motors that was designed as a truck motor (348, 361, 390, etc)? While the 383 was a pass car (and even HP pass car) from the start.
Click to expand...
No the 396 was design for a car from the beginning. It's the product of the z11(?) mystery motor that turned out to be the mark 4 big block that produced the 396/402, 427, 454.
 
The 396 really was a 402, look up the bore and stroke and do the math. I cant remember why exactly it was marketed as a 396, I feel like another brand had a 402 or something like that.
 
Oldsmobile 402.
I think pontiac had a 403
Probably just to differentiate between brands, ie they didnt want to call it a 400 becasue there was a small block 400. And the 396 was already a popular motor. Whats a few inches? Ford had 3 351's and a 352 as well as a 427. 428 and a 429....and then their Are all the sibling hemis....
 
RustyRatRod said:
Yeah, but wouldn't THAT be an epic fail? The big block chebbie is one of the easiest GM engines to get good power out of. Somebody was retarded. No offense to retarded people.
Click to expand...

Hell! A retarded person could make more power!
 
IIRC, if you orederd a 400 in an early 70's Impala or caprice, you got a small block, but if you ordered a 400 in a truck, you got a 402.

Stiil, don't get the mis-badging. Seems like a lot of BS and trouble to go through.
Who got to decide what CID would be used to misrepresent them?

I can see the senior design engineers and marketing conference room meeting-
"lets put all the displacements from 391 to 411 EXCEPT 400, 401, 402, and 403, in a hat, and pull one out"

On another note, I've always thought the 5,7 should have been a 357.
Who wouldnt run out to buy a 357 Magnum???

Instead we got the CID of a legendary GM motor.
 
No, the 396 was the 396 from 1965 until 1970. Then it became the 402. The story I always heard was that someone set the boring bar by accident at .030" from a 396 standard bore and bored several hundred blocks over. Thus the 402 was born. The 396 bore was 4.095 and the 402 bore was 4.125. The 396 was made from 1965 to 1969. The 402 from 1970 to 1972. They were two different engines, although they were marketed as the 396 still in the smaller cars, while they called it a 400 in the big cars. They actually called it the 402 in trucks.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chevrolet_Big-Block_engine#396_and_402
 
They marketed it as a 396 because they were popular and didn't want to "throw people off" by calling it a 402 so SS396 stuck.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
-

Back
Top