Wheel Hop
The cam is a solid Lunati I bought back in the 80s. 249 @ .050 and 508 lift. 108 LSA 31 degrees overlap.
That looks an awful lot like the Mopar 292/292/108 cam I ran. In my combo it peaked at about 5400, and was all done by 6000...... but I revved it to 7000 anyway, because a 360 revving 7000 thru dual 3" exhaust is such a rush, lol .......
The thing is, She would idle down to 550 in starter gear of 9.44(manual trans) at just 5* of advance, and would start taking throttle right away. By mid to late teens she would take WOT with no drama, but to be fair, this was with a 750DP carb. She did not like the Vacuum Secondary type carb, in the turns.
Here is my timing for that combo; 14 Idle, 34 power at 3400 with the OOTB Edelbrock
alloy heads, with a slope of ~.8* per 100 rpm,beginning at ~1000. With this, it would run on
87E10 full-time. As for vacuum advance, I cut the stops down, to get ~22 degrees, and brought it in as fast as possible. Additionally I installed a dash-mounted, dial-back timing delay box with a range of 15 degrees. I set it to get 6* advance/9* retard. This got me down to 14 less 9= 5* for idling around the A&W parking lot without bucking at ~4.5mph, and up to ~53* for cruising on. As previously stated this combo ran at 11.3Scr with a Quench of .028, with a CCP of 170. Peak torque was around 3800rpm.
But the VP was only 135 according to the Wallace Calculator, Read about VP here;
V/P Index Calculation
and therein was my problem. With 3.55s and no torque convertor, the bottom-end was a lil soggy, and 6000 was over 50mph/ 60 was 7000 both in first gear. I had the wrong rear gear, and without an overdrive, I was unwilling to run any more. So I pulled that cam out and sold it.
The point is this; At 11.3Scr, I didn't think I wanted to run any higher than that, so I believed that I was maxed out for pressure (170), and the VP was only 135. I really wanted more torque, and was willing to give up useless rpm at the top. That was year 2000.
So I pulled the cam and in it's place I slid a 270/276/110 which was 223/
[email protected] .. At the same time. I reduced the pressure with a thicker headgasket (.039), to 10.76Scr. This jumped the pressure up to 180psi with a
new VP of 158.
Holy cow what a difference! The power peak came down to around 5000, but it still revved to 7000. But shifting at 5500 got me 47 in First and 65 in Second. With such a high VP, I could get rubber in Second gear any time I nailed it; so I was a happy guy. Now I needed bigger tires.
Now, if you want to get an idea of your power curve, all you need is one of those accelerometers. Mine is a
G-Tec Pro SS, suction-cupped to the windshield; Pretty cool tool.
