500hp & 600hp Bench Racing thread

Rat Bastid said

You might be surprised a how many of those engines that are out there that don’t make that kind of power.

Every time I go to the track I’m surprised at how many 12 second 500 HP engines are out there.

I’d say your average 408 is making 470, maybe 480. Maybe.

Of course, some of that is piss poor component selection and horrible engine tuning.

Don’t get me started on the garbage chassis tuning I see. It’s horrible.

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This is exactly why I point at pro racers when looking at the engineering and potential. Sprint motors, pro-stock, etc. The shade-tree guys tend to run junk. They copy some combo from some magazine article, but then skip the head porting stage and a few other important bits, put a junk trans behind it, run too little gear, and claim "it's a 500hp build" when in reality it's never been tuned and is missing 15% of the airflow it needs for the magazine cam...

If sprint guys are getting 850-900hp from a 410 with a 4.1" bore and a 3.8" stroke, then a 4" stroke can't take that much away from the potential. Emphasis on potential. The real issue is that most folks are running poorly chosen cams with poor geometry with poor heads and worse exhaust. Plenty of guys get it done on the track with a stock-spec shortblock but choose the rest wisely and crack under the 10's with a decent chassis and they still don't need to run stratospheric rev limiters.