Big horsepower 318 builds

First of all, those heads aren’t trick, unless you are running Super Stock, and no way would I have used them. Stud mounted rockers are JUNK. You won’t find many even basic SBC’s out there running stud mounted rockers any more.

Second, all that work on the crankshaft is overrated. He could have reduced the diameter of the counter weights and used a crank scraper and been better off.

Third, you can tube the lifter gallery with a hand drill if you have the common sense of a stick. It’s not hard. And it’s not trick. It should be done on ANY engine with solid lifters and any engine with hydraulic lifters where you want to control oil leaks.

Fourth, using chevy rods is a no brainer. Bearings are cheaper, easier to get and have many more undersized available.

That’s a basic prepped short block, with 10.5:1 for the rules and a solid lifter cam. The heads damn sure ain’t trick flows and most likely aren’t as good as a set of chinese heads with good porting.

Again, it’s not that hard. Nothing trick.


The heads on that engine( i ran it in my car) maxed at a little over 270@600 lift. Nice work but nothing super trick. Very mildly worked actually
I didnt run the camshaft that the engine was on the dyno with.
I ran a 231/238 solid camshaft with similar lift.
I also used that same cheap crosswinds dual plane intake.
The 950 carb i still have to this day. Kept it and gave an almost brand new Pro systems 950 To the guy i sold the car to back almost 5 years ago. It was about 8 slower in the 1/4 than the magazine 950. Just flat wouldnt ET as well. I always give up shiny for ET
I also ran ultra cheap 1 5/8 headers on that combo.
If someone were to make a legit 500 horse from that combo, first thing would be to swap in a dome slug and roller cam. Probably only need something 250 ish at 50
Probably use out of the box trick flow heads and a ported victor or maybe excellerator
At 12.5 compression, those heads and a single plane, it would bust 500 easy with tti step headers and stay at 7k or under.
I didnt even run the thing 6500 with those beehives. Shifted it at 6200 and striped at about 6.