318 For Fun

Dartswinger70 said

well lets just say you start with the LA 318 2 barrel stock cam than add headers and duals How much horsepower is freed up with headers and duals?

then from there a 4 barrel say a 600 cfm or smaller...

after that a cam, a carefully chosen cam one that works with the low compression flattops in the LA 318

Then rear gears ...and I'd stop there before going into the engine, as in a over bore and high comp pistons and bearings starts to cross the budget line for me Id go with the 360 or 5.9 magnum. i think when going after the stock LA bottom end, changing it to bring up compression etc. then one should consider the bigger engine. It just makes economic sense IMO.

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It would be fun to find out. Engine dyno would work except for the dual exhaust comparison. You could dyno with manifolds then headers for comparison but you wouldn't get the restriction from the single to dual exhaust. All the rest of the changes could come from the engine dyno. A chassis dyno would be better for that and you could note power increases from all the modifications. You would have to calculate drivetrain power losses if you want just engine power specs. You can also spend some time at the track after all the different mods and compare times. Not the very most accurate because of all the differences in traction, temp, baro. pressure and the like. Where a engine dyno is a bit more consistent as far as environment goes) ET and MPH would have to be calculated to horsepower if that's the numbers you are looking for. It's all a guess but the more information you have the closer that guess is. Sorry for the ramble.