Bill wrote,
>Since I don't have $5000 to put into my car's engine, I was wondering
what
>engine modifications get the biggest bang for the buck. I have a
series V
>motor with all the early series externals on it such as the twin Zenith
>WIA carbs and the early exhaust headers. I will be pulling the motor
this
>winter to install an overdrive unit and thought that I would do some
>simple changes such as cleaning up the interior of the stock log
manifold
>and having my cam mildly ground. Any other cost effective
modifications
>that can be made? It would be nice to know cost per horsepower for
many
>of the modifications that can be done to these cars.
It all comes down to how you want to drive the car when you are done.
If I recall, yours is a "driver", so you ought to consider a mild
warmover
as opposed to an all out assault vehicle.
Also, you need to decide if you want to tear the motor down for
what you have in store performance-wise.
Scenario 1 "Cheap and easy"
If you have a low milage car with good compression, you could
just pull the head, pull the sump, pull the pistons and rods out, and
install some of Ramons ARP rod bolts, shot peen and resize
the con rods, re-ring and re-bearing. "roughen up the cylinders for
break in of the new rings".
Port match your intake to the head, verify that you valves are good
and replace if needed.
Get a cam ground.
Good specs that will add performance without killing drivability
are:
265 degree intake 222 deg(at).050
275 degree exhaust 231 deg(at).050
.315 lift at lobe
cut on 108 degree lobe centers.
Scenario 2 "Not so Cheap and easy"
=Scenario 1+...
Replace pistons with forged flat tops.
Consider Carrillo type rods if your intentions include RPMs
beyond 6000.
Extensive head work including use of modified Datsun 510 valves
and chamber reconfiguration "to deshroud intake valve".
Net compression should be above 11/1, so gasoline will be tough
to come by.
Lighten the flywheel, and get a good compound clutch disc.
You just about will have to run the dual webers here for tunability
issues as well as for sheer flow reasons.
If you are gonna keep your WIA carbs, then your mods should be
limited to camming and compression. Port work will help, but only
to a minor extent, and much deeper mods are needed to make
the heads flow properly, and at that point, the WIAs are really
not suitible "move on to webers".
Jarrid Gross
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