[Shotimes] How to get 300HP from your 3.0L SHO engine

[Mark Nunnally]

It's hard to look at the sum of the parts and assume the "whole" on a
break-down basis.

It might be close though.  One thing is I don't think the light flywheel
affects much other than 1st and 2nd gear, 3rd and 4th spin up is slower, and
it's not really relieving any inertia drag at that point since the revs
climb slower against the taller gear(s).

I rode in Lance Cheney's 92 at the convention, which is a 3.2L with stage 2
cams, 30 lb injectors, EH/BBB intake, 80mm MAF, UD's and exhaust, etc.  It
makes 250 fwhp on the dynojet, and has a pretty decent low/mid range torque
curve as well.  But that's a pretty strung out 3.2L, and it's probably
barely over 300 hp at the crank.  So even getting to 100 hp/liter is still
somewhat difficult, and those last few ponies are going to cost a lot of
$$'s per pony.  In fact, the higher up you go, the more they cost :)

After running 3.0L cams in my 3.2L since I put it in a 5speed car, I put a
set of Josh's new 40 cams in the 89 last week before a track day weekend and
was pleased with the on track performance.  However, you'll need a tuning
aid to help it to run right on the street (low end/mid range is much better
than I was expecting) so for the cams and a tuning aid, you are up over
$1000.  Heck the 3.2L alone was only like $200 or $300 out of pocket.  Then
$500 for an EH runners and BBB's, etc.  Starts to add up, unless you can
horse trade or buy used stuff (what I try to do, I'm cheap :).

Then figure at that point for open track the stock injectors are basically
static all the time at that point, so you drop some $$ for injectors.  Some
dyno time to tweak your new 1100+ kg/hr MAF curve, etc.  Dang, that 405 hp
Z06 starts to look like more of a bargain everyday :)

For a street car you want a nice fat curve, and Bang for the buck, the best
drop is a healthy-j-yard 3.2L with your old 3.0L cams in there.  With just
regular bolt ons (exhaust, MAF, etc) my 89 ran pretty good and had healthy
dyno numbers.  Even with full weight it was  14.0-14.1 car @ 98-99 mph.  All
the other added stuff probably wouldn't help that much for ET, maybe mph.
But for a street car/occasional track car, I'd just run a stock internal BOS
3.2L.  Beyond that, the $$ per hp gets up there.

For my 89 now though, I wanted some more cam cuz frankly for open track, you
are above 5000 just about all the time anyway.

I'm going to try to run the 89 at the drags here soon, just to check the
traps with the cams.  Should be a pretty good indicator of peak hp.

mark