415HP from 318ci IS POSSABLE!!

Moper,
As you stated you don't and haven't built a 318 for anyone lately, but if you look at the depth of the valves in a 318 head either a 302 or a early version, the valves are down from the deck in a uncut head .110-.120 then add the gasket in and you have more clearence. Most 318 heads have very little cut off of them, as the chambers are small to start with.

Now using my example, a 318 with the 85-89 pistons and the block square decked and the piston in the hole .015 and a .020-.022 gasket and the valve being .100 down in the chamber and you now have .137 piston to valve clearence @ TDC. Most cams don't have fast enough ramps to make the valve hit the pistons before the piston is on it's way down. Unles your using a full race cam with 270 or more @ .050 duration and a low centerline. But this isn't what I was talking about either. I have run pistons .020 out of the block and run a 266 @ .050 cams and a .040 gasket without valve reliefs and NEVER touched a valve to the piston top. And the cam had a 106 CL the cam was a .590 from mopar, but this is on my BB. I ended up with .080 valve to piston clearence. The engine was at 10.84:1 compression.

But anyways with the 322 that I have now the pistons come out of the block .017 and I use a .055 gasket and I have .320 V to P clearence. And yes the pistons are valve relieved but they didn't need to be, but this is how they came. And the cam is a 290-A .540/300 255 @ .050 with 106/114 CL. So could I run this cam in a engine without valve reliefs, sure as the valve reliefs are only .200 deep, this still gives me .120 V to P clearence, just as I stated before.

On my short stroke BB a 3.38 which is just .070 larger than the 318 at 3.31 and with a .480 hyd. cam I was making over 500 HP that you can't seem to make. The OL was only 60* of crank rotation it also had 177 psi for cylinder pressures at cranking. The 322 has 165 cranking pressure, a little less due to bore and stroke size. But running pressures are just under 200 psi. Maybe your not looking in the right place as you always think bigger is better, longer strokes, bigger heads, ect.,ect..

I look at it this way, anyone can build a engine, but take the littlest engine and and research it, then find out what it takes to make it work with the factory stuff and then fine tune the parts. Machine it properly and use the right heads and do the right modifications to the heads and all of a sudden you have a engine that makes as much power as one with 100 more CI's. I've seen many 408 CI engines that can't run as fast as the 322 in a 3,330 lbs car that it's in. But there are some out there that are in lighter cars that do. Now I'm not saying that I'm going to compete with everyone out there that has a 408, I'm just stating whats at our local track and surrounding area. And most of them don't run iron heads or small mech. cams they have rollers and eddy's, which should give them the advantage. And it does, but when they say how much they have in there engines and hear what we have in ours they don't tend to say too much.

I've had many come and ask what the engine size is that we run and they say 340? 360?, you have what? a 318. Then they say, man you have one of the fastest 318's I've ever seen. The next ? they ask is now how much do you have in it, then they really get shocked, when I tell them I would sell the engine to them for $3,500.00, less carb and ign. Once again velocity and cylinder filling is the key to making HP and TQ. The more effectively the engine does this the more HP and TQ it will make.

Once again the heads are 302's with 1.78 and 1.50 valves, they flow 230 @ .500 on the intake and 188 @ .500 on the exh.. The VE is over 105 @ 4K and peaks @ over 112 @ peak TQ and is still over 103 @ 6,500 rpm's. Physics as a whole would tend to say that when something is 100% that nothing else could possiably be better. But then how can a engine become more than 100% effeicient? But they do, so I guess that physics can't apply here.