What goodies do I need to build a Fast slant 6

-
Runs high 12's with 3.73 Sure grip gears at the time.Worked manual valve body 904.Sold it with a new set of 4.30's and a spool. New owner runs high 12's low 13's and still is racing it.
View attachment 1715669347 View attachment 1715669349
Hi Darter6
When you say 308hp I’m guessing it’s at the flywheel?.
Yes that’s certainly a bit of cash for 10 odd years ago, so did it have quite a lumpy cam in it? And how did you know what made the power did you have someone build it that had built them before a
Runs high 12's with 3.73 Sure grip gears at the time.Worked manual valve body 904.Sold it with a new set of 4.30's and a spool. New owner runs high 12's low 13's and still is racing it.
View attachment 1715669347 View attachment 1715669349

Hi Darter6
So how did you know what worked with what to get the hp out of it, did you have someone that had built them engine’s before and just knew what worked ?.
And I’m guessing the 308hp was at the flywheel?.
Did it have a nice lumpy cam in it and a nice cammy note to it?.
I’m just throwing things around at the moment to see what is going to be best and to get the desired results I’m after, I’m wanting that real lumpy cam exhaust sound and I’m wanting some real snappy power that you can just put your foot down and throw you back into your seat and obviously light up the rear tyres if you really wanted to but at 50yo I’m past the driving like a dickhead stage but I’ve never owned a car that has a lot of power and I’d just like to do it once!, and I like the old school car’s so the ap6 with a nice engine, sounds like a good way to go and the ap6 is a car that’s within my budget yes I’d LOVE a HT Monaro but that’s well out of my reach unfortunately.
Yes I could buy something new and obviously have a lot more power for less cash.
My biggest concern is that they don’t make the aftermarket parts for the ap6 compared to an old Holden or Ford!, the car I’ve got had been sitting in a shed for over 25 years pulled apart so just hoping everything is there! He said it was so I just had to take him on his word. The body is in good condition very straight with only the smallest bit of rust.
Cheers
 
Flywheel HP. Jack Clifford is where I learned allot back then. His logo was 6=8.
As for the cam,it came from Clifford.Clifford was a good company before Jack Clifford died and his Son-in-law took over.Buying from them is iffy and many complaints now. I have no idea if they are even still in business.
There is a you tube video of the car making a pass.It's called Glenn Vs Romeo if you can find it.
I sent you the link to the Hot Rod article in one of the other forms where you asked.The cam spec is listed.
 
Steve Dulcich (Roadkill Garage) put together a hot supercharged slant that made around 300hp but that blower kit was 3 grand at least! They ran it N/A once and it made ~220hp at the crank. He ported the head, shaved quite a bit off and put a good cam in it, then topped it with a 4 barrel. So that's about as good as it gets as far as I have seen.

If I ever find a spare slant I'm going to look around at other OHC cylinder heads that might fit...
Hi Loggato
So I’m guessing he’s on this forum then? And on this forum is it possible to pm other members? I’m only new so still trying to work me way around and figure out what’s available on here.
I’ve looked on the Aussie speed shop website and noticed how expensive a supercharger is there approximately 8-9k and that’s obviously without a good carby setup the a good exhaust and a nice engine build so going to be looking at around 15k to the hp I’m looking at so that’s a hell of a lot of cash for what’s really a basic engine in the way of technology wise.
If only they had came out with a 265 in them as it’s reasonably easy to get 200wrhp without spending a heap of cash.
 
Do you ever wish sometimes you had a stout V-8? Or do you love the power and sound of one? Only reason I ask is aside from some of the rabid diehard hardcore Slant 6 guys out there that live and breathe and will do everything to help (and convince) you build a stout slant, you may be disappointed with the cost and outcome if it's your first Slant. It'll never satisfy like a V-8 I don't care what anyone says. Slants are cool, visually and can be impressive beasts but you WILL trade away street manners if lumpy lumpy and radical are part of the equation. Power boosters as mentioned would be your best bet, but $$$$$$$$$
Hi 12many
Yes I hear you 15k is a lot for a 6 that has basically no technology advancements just all old school, and yes I’d thought about a V8 but I have a V8 engineered into my Toyota 4Runner so just wanted to go with a six cylinder with a real lumpy cam setup I had hoped it wasn’t much stuffing around to put a 265 in it as they can make a heap of power pretty cheaply but I’ve had a few tell me that it’s also a bit of stuffing around!, and at 50yo I’m past the stuffing around stage in life been there and done the and the body’s just to broken and tired so was hoping now that the 225 was able to make some reasonable power gains but just didn’t realise How expensive they are to make power.
I’m open to suggestions still at this stage as it’s just sitting there and hence why I’m on here trying to figure out how to go about it.
Cheers
 
I was waiting till there were more posts
Before I 340ed my duster I had a slant 6
3.91 gears
Melling cam
Super six carb and intake
Headers
It was huge fun although I couldn’t smoke the tires although it was fast snuff to keep up with a 16 sec pinto
I blew it up regularly thrashing it past 5000
 
You said
Hi All
I’m wanting to build a fast cranky slant 225 6cyl !! Something between a drag, race engine but able to drive on the road.
I want it to have a lumpy cam and whatever else is needed to make some big HP numbers I’d like to get 300rwhp + .

I’m not a mechanic and don’t know what works to get that type of HP so I’d really appreciate it if those who have built these before, and have got these types of results!, if they could Please elaborate on what they did to there engines in detail so I can build something similar.
I have friends that are mechanics so hoping I can get the block, head and other engine bits and pieces and give it to them to put it together for me.
I’d really appreciate any help and you time letting me know.
Thanks
Hi Hyper
Thanks for the information, I wasn’t sure if people on this forum just want people to get straight to the point but yes I should’ve given a bit more info to get a better reply.
I know this is a bit last know but I’ve got an ap6 I basically just wanted an old school car that I could still afford and have a hot engine that really cranked out some fun power!, I’m 50yo and never had something cranky so to say and yes I could’ve got a V8 and something newer that would certainly have more power but I really wanted an old school car.
I’d seen some 245 and 265 engine’s really crack hard without spending a fortune so for 6k and thought that the 225 might be similar but I’ve obviously been mistaken lol, so perhaps I might have to look at the turbo side of things but guessing that won’t be very cheap either.
Anyway thanks for your time and help it’s greatly appreciated.
Cheers
Hi 12many
Yes I hear you 15k is a lot for a 6 that has basically no technology advancements just all old school, and yes I’d thought about a V8 but I have a V8 engineered into my Toyota 4Runner so just wanted to go with a six cylinder with a real lumpy cam setup I had hoped it wasn’t much stuffing around to put a 265 in it as they can make a heap of power pretty cheaply but I’ve had a few tell me that it’s also a bit of stuffing around!, and at 50yo I’m past the stuffing around stage in life been there and done the and the body’s just to broken and tired so was hoping now that the 225 was able to make some reasonable power gains but just didn’t realise How expensive they are to make power.
I’m open to suggestions still at this stage as it’s just sitting there and hence why I’m on here trying to figure out how to go about it.

Cheers
Okay;
So, by now, you have a better understanding of a project like this. A lot of the replys are in response to your initial post, which laid out a goal of 300RWHP.
While this might be possible, big Horsepower is a function of big rpm. Cuz that is the math and the physics of it; and that is what I want to talk about;
The formula for horsepower is
(Torque x rpm)/5250 = horsepower.
If your engine can only make 225 ftpounds, then; at 4000, it will make 171 hp; at 5000 then 214hp; at 6000 then 257hp; at 7000 then 300hp; at 8000 then 343hp. You can see how that works, right.
But to get those numbers, you have to build that engine in such a way as to move the power away from a lower rpm to that higher rpm, thus giving up low-rpm power. And the engine still has to do two things;
1) it has to survive the trip, and
2) it has to actually move the required amount of air thru the engine.
That said;
anytime you sacrifice low rpm power in a streeter, with no other changes, it is usually a bad thing.
So what causes the low-rpm power loss?
Well the first thing to go, as you begin moving the power curve, is low-rpm pressure. Pressure makes heat, and heat is power, so it just goes away. Which is fine in a drag-racer, cuz you just increase the stall, so the engine does not need to operate in that zone. But driving around on the street with a 3500 or 4000 stall TC, is not gonna be your favorite thing to do for very long.
So, then, you gotta get the pressure back up, to where it becomes fun again. But after you do that, now, with the power-peak not coming around until 6000rpm, you come to find out that the 2.7x gears you are running, put the power in first gear, at 6000rpm= 57 mph, or so; and the march to the peak doesn't even start until 42mph.That is where it might start. That is horrible for a streeter, because something like 98% of your driving will be well below that speed/rpm. So those 2.7s gotta go, and now you are faced with the probability of giving up hiway cruising, to bring that power down into a usable roadspeed range.
So then, now you are looking at installing "race-gears" to go along with your "Race-Convertor" and your "race engine". And you have to start doing "Race-car" maintenance.

So lets go back to the Normally Aspirated 300RWHP. . All the power formulas and such, work off crank hp so; allowing for powertrain losses, this will be more like 300/.85= 353 crank hp. To make 353hp,with any engine, requires a specific minimum amount of fuel thruput of, .5 pounds of fuel per hp per hour so; .5 x350=175 pounds per hour; which at 6pounds per gallon is 29 USg per hour; so your fuel system has to deliver that.
But more importantly is thruputting the air that goes with that. To thruput at the rate of 175 pounds of fuel per hour will require 12.5 times as much air by weight, so 2188pounds of air per hour. At STP, that comes to 2188 /.081= about 27,000 cubic feet of air, or about 34 bedroomfulls. Ok then, 27000/60minutes=450cfm. But this is at 100% efficiency and at STP which is Standard Temperature and Pressure, which in this case ,IIRC is 68*F and 1.0 atmosphere.
Ok so; any engine, to make 350 hp, will need to combust fuel at a rate of 175 pounds per hour, with 450cfm of air, at STP and 100% efficiency

Now the crusher;
225 cubes is just 0.1302 cubic feet. At 100% efficiency and 5500 rpm, that comes to 358 cubic feet. Accounting for the slanty design, you might get 80/85% out of it; so this 358 might be closer to 295cfm.
Good luck building a NA 225 to go from 295@82%, to the required 450cfm @100%, which is an increase of~53%...... See what I mean? That's gonna get expensive real fast!

at 100%Efficiency;
A 225 can make 450cfm at 6912
A 318 can make 450cfm at 4852
A 360 can make 450cfm at 4320
A 408 can make 450cfm at 3812
A 440 can make 450cfm at 3535
The lower you bring the number, the funner the engine will be, on the street.

the 360 at 85% Efficiency can make 450 at 5080; that's a pretty streetable cam.This engine practically falls together at 350 Crank hp.

Check my math.
1 cubic foot is 12x12x12 inches= 1728cubic inches.
In a 4-stroke engine, each cylinder inhales on every other revolution. So for purposes of calculation, you must halve the cubic inches. So, the formula is
(cubic inches/2, divided by 1728) times rpm =cfm @100% Efficiency and STP.
For a given horsepower at 100%E, take the calculated cfm and rearrange the formula like so;
Known cfm divided by {(cid/2)/1728}=rpm; example for 350 hp;
450 divided by {(225/2)/1728}=rpm=6912 @100E@STP

100%Efficiency means the engine is able at some point in the rpm band, able to inhale a quantity of air equal to it's size.
Typically,from factory to hot streeter,at WOT, the numbers range from 70% to 100% or occasionally 105% in a really hot streeter. The Slanty, because of it's design architecture, is gonna be on the low end of the scale, whereas pushrodV8s will come in closer to 85 to maaaaybe95% . Few streeters are built to the high end of the scale; mostly because...... the powerbands are rising ever higher, and eventually, the combos become decidedly un-streetfriendly........... Not to mention, expensive.
Ok so now, you have a better idea of why we are so "down", on your thread.

Had you asked about a 200crank hp streeter, the numbers present as doable.And the combo is much less expensive.
Had you asked about 300crank hp with a turbo; that's a nice streeter.Particularly with a slanty, because of the breathing restriction they suffer in the head as normally aspirated. But; a cranky-sounding slanty and supercharging are not very good bedfellows.
Had you taken streetability out of the equation, AND not mentioned horsepower at all; well then
cranky it up.
Just remember to leave room in the budget for the rest of the combo; like Stall, gears and support systems, like cooling, ignition, exhaust, and fuel; not to forget suspension,steering,brakes, and tires.
You can still build a fun streetcar, with far less than 300RWHP
Speaking about tires; lol, all this talk about 300RWHP is meaningless if it all goes up in tirespin. Unless, of course, tirespin is what you are after.... In which case, there are far cheaper, easier, and less complicated, ways to achieve that.
And finally, as you go up in elevation, the smaller your engine is, and the crankier it is, the sooner it will begin to wheeze due to loss of oxygen. And that is where supercharging will level the playing field.
As always; I'm just trying to help, and
Happy HotRodding.
 
Last edited:
Now, if I was gonna build a cranky slanty;
The first thing I would do is address the tire problem.
And the second is to visit the gearing options.
Because, those two are gonna play a big role in my next decision of.... is this car gonna be a city-only car or what. Cuz if a city car, then I can make it cranky! But if this car has to spend a lotta time on the hiway, then the gears are gonna play a big role into it's crankyness.
The next decision is based on; what is my operating environment? as to; elevation, temperature, and what grade fuel am I limited to. These will help select my Dynamic Compression Ratio, which will drive the camshaft selection, which will determine the Static Compression ratio, and those will drive the TC stall. You see how those are a chain of choices. If I screw up in the beginning of the selection process, then ALL the following decisions will be wrong.
The cam selection will determine in large part, the operating rpm; so now I am looking to the guts of the engine, to build it strong enough to survive the abuse I'm intending to subject it to. And I have to look at the head to see if it can even support the required airflow in my chosen operating range.
OK wait;
with a slanty, I should probably look at the head before anything, I forgot I was supposed to be thinking slanty, OOps.

But no never-mind, you can see that when limited to a small ,normally aspirated engine, it gets complicated. All these complications go away, when you consider supercharging. especially a turbo. Your only problems are; fabricating the manifold, deciding how high to crank the pressure, and how to stop the tires from spinning all the time.

Now; if I was gonna build a turbo-slanty (and I have never turbo'ed anything), I'm a bit of a rebel, so I would try something a lil different. I would build a blow-thu, staged dual-turbo set-up, with a lil one under the hood to help the slanty get moving, and a slightly bigger one remotely mounted, to flesh out the midrange. Of course, designing the exhaust and the bypass controls will be fun; but that is how I would do it. And since I absolutely hate the sound of a BOV, while my system would have one, I would make every effort to not have it get involved . So number one, I would run an automatic trans, and small enough turbos that maybe it could run without waistgates too; well, the front one would need special consideration.
Since some 85% of my daily driving is gonna be under 3500rpm, that front turbo is gonna be busy, and I would dump it's exhaust into the rear turbo, along with a front bypass..cuz really, the front one is mostly just there to spool the back one up. The more I think about it, the more I'm starting to think to just run small twins, because in your Ute, traction is gonna be a big issue. Yeah OK, I talked myself into it, twins it is.
Ok with twins, I can run a Whiplash-TYPE cam, with an exhaust bypass, and have a cranky exhaust at idle out the back bumper, but as soon as it revs up, the bypass closes and by the time the stall hits, the twins are ready for action. Yeah so the twins are just gonna dump up front somewhere; I like it
So now, I can have my cake and eat it too,namely;
Cranky exhaust, lazy enough power under stall to get moving without tirespin, an initial hit at stall, a big fat midrange, choking at higher rpm, cuz everything else is choking up there anyway. I can keep the factory stall, and keep the factory gears, and the tires won't have to be monsters. I can run pumpgas, with maybe some meth-injection for WOT. That will make a fine tame easy to drive car at Part Throttle , yet the midrange is suitably V8 torquey, and at WOT, able to leap tall buildings in a single bound,lol. And I can cruise the hiway out into the interior, or out around the outside, and over the hills; the turbos will take care of business.
Yeah I'm liking it.
Yano; 225 sounds pretty small; but it is afterall, 3.687liters. And because it has a 4.125 stroke in it, you can put a pretty cranky cam into it, with that turbo, as long as you slam the intake valves shut, well before the TC stalls.
The only reason I choose the exhaust bypass to the back, is to hear the cranky cam, cuz if you force that exhaust thru the turbos, they will chop the sound to ribbons and you would never hear it. At that point, there would be no good reason for a cranky cam. I just put it there for you. It wouldn't have to be big, cuz it would only be working from idle to stall, depending on how you engineer it.
It could be like one full-length pipe of say 1.25pipe, no muffler, then Tee'd into a pair of classy tips. Or another idea is to run tiny duals to just in front of the rear tires, and baloney slash them there. Or a third idea idea is to run a full sized exhaust hooked to the turbo outputs, and small bypasses ,either manually-valved from the cabin, or automatic by waistgates , and I would try it with no mufflers..
Like I said; I have never turbo'd anything, but this is how I would want to do it.
I'm sure some FABO guys will chip in once you commit to turbo(s). Which for you, IMO, is the best route. You could even, leave the entire rest of the combo totally alone, except maybe tires and brakes,lol.

One thing you cannot get with the slanty, is a V8 sound.
The V8 sound is created by the two pairs of cylinder consecutively firing lefts and rights, one pair on each side. The SBM firing order is 1-8-4-3-6-5-7-2 and so on. So what you get is; L-R-R-L-R- L-L-R; L being Left and R being Right, which makes a lovely sing-song inside your head; tap it out on your ears with your fingertips.
The slanty firing order is 1-5-3-6-2-4; so with twin pipes, you have continuously alternating power pulses between first revolution of 1-5-3, and next revolution of 6-2-4. In a single pipe it blurs to a continuous put-put-put-put-put-put-put, ad nauseam .
But if you split the exhaust between 3 and 4 like the Dutra pipes do, then you can route those with two pipes, one to each side of the car, and have the sound alternating between sides; IDK if I would like it, but it would be cool nevertheless.
Imagine;
F-F-F- - - on one side, and on the other side,
... - - -R-R-R, and so on; F being Front cylinders, R being Rears, and the spaces being the absence of firings. Tap it out on your ears, with your fingertips; L-L-L-R-R-R
Very interesting......
 
Last edited:
Hi 12many
Yes I hear you 15k is a lot for a 6 that has basically no technology advancements just all old school, and yes I’d thought about a V8 but I have a V8 engineered into my Toyota 4Runner so just wanted to go with a six cylinder with a real lumpy cam setup I had hoped it wasn’t much stuffing around to put a 265 in it as they can make a heap of power pretty cheaply but I’ve had a few tell me that it’s also a bit of stuffing around!, and at 50yo I’m past the stuffing around stage in life been there and done the and the body’s just to broken and tired so was hoping now that the 225 was able to make some reasonable power gains but just didn’t realise How expensive they are to make power.
I’m open to suggestions still at this stage as it’s just sitting there and hence why I’m on here trying to figure out how to go about it.
Cheers
I’ll be brief, my take is purely from the perspective of being a V-8 person and only having a slant 6 at the time and trying to up its performance when I should of just bit the bullet at the time and gone with a swap. Sounds like you’re up for the challenge and rewards of a built Slant:)
 


Here you go, nice build on a 4.0L jeep engine, they used the edelbrock new head but swapped back when they did the turbo set up, but I'd keep the better flowing edelbrock aluminum head they have for the 4.0L.
 
I don't even see camshafts for the slant six on the Clifford site now.
 
-
Back
Top