budget drag strip car build Q's
Tadjou, before we take another step foward, the Edelbrock Performer is a stock replacement intake manifold, can you return the intake for a RPM or a M-1 single plane intake?
Do you know if the J heads have been milled? At a norm. , the J heads have a 72cc chamber. With my KB107's @ +.030, the ratio was 9.8-1 on a 360. This push's pump gas. Of course a bigger cam can allow more compresion, but this is an area that one could start to split hairs over. On a street ride, it's OK, for a strip only ride, you can push it some more unless a pump gas/dual purpose ride is OK.
You can still do a dual purpose car and get going preety fast on the strip. I'd recomend this route to start because you can still enjoy the car and when you want to do a strip only car, you can just mill the heads alot to go up in ratio.
As mentioned by Summitar, the rear end could be a sure grip equiped and it can and will perform very well. A spool on the street IMO kind of sucks.
I also think that 12's would not be dreaming. I believe you could get into the 11's if your willing to go foward with strip like weight saveings and such things that could be a pain on the street like a large cam, stall converter and high gears. While that would help make the car fast, it would limit the streetabilty of the car some and regulate the car to a limited amount of Hwy. useage.
I've had cars in the past where 55 is at about 4000 rpm. That makes it tuff to go far quickly. But it's a great street bruiser. Once you get that car to launch well when set up, it's a blast leaving the comp at the line and watching them play catch up.
Oh, those pictures show a great spring board of a car. Nice, real nice. Also think cage.