What can I get out of a 427 / 390 or 400hp

[jims427400]

Engines out and heading to the builder monday. New everything inside w/ .o30 over,and using stock heads. What is the max I can do and stay civilized. Going to get recomendation from my builder but I'm sure alot of you have gone down this road.

 

[TimAT]

Cleanup the ports on the heads, stuff a roller cam in there, and 500 RWP is not hard to see. IT will pretty much depend on what you want to do. Easy driver or PITA around town.

I'm running a 454, 12.5 compression .560/.600 cam running VP110 fuel and it's a blast to drive. Also a PITA- no torque off idle but at 3k it kind of "wakes up".:cool

Decide what you want to do- nice easy driver or street killer or somewhere between. I'm looking at building a 496- not going after any killer HP, but loads of torque- like 600ft/lbs. at 2k. And on pump gas.

 

[gold1969]

i have a 69 L36, 390 4 speed. I built my motor with an Engel .560 roller cam. I kept the stock intake and exhaust manifolds and port matched them the the heads. I ported the heads and used roller rockers. I milled the heads to give me a 11.0 Comp ratio. I have a Pertronix ignition and recurved the advance. I dyno'd the motor before installation and with it being tight and no tuning at all it made 429 hp at 5000 rpm. The torque was 476 at 3500 rpm. The dyno operator didnt want to rev it any higher than 5000. I put the motor in in fall of 2000 and its been running great since. The motor wakes up at 3000 rpm and it flies. With this cam my tires which are 215/75/15 radials (similar in size to an F-70-15) actually hook up. The gears are 3.55's. I can hammer it in 1st, the rear will squat, hit second and then it really gets going. For a tire hook up story, how is this, I raced an all wheel drive S-RT-8 Jeep Cherokee that was hot rodded. Keep in mind he had All Wheel drive and i have two 215/75/15 goodyear white walls. The guy was pushing to go for it, so when the light turned green i let him start it, he nailed it and jumped out 1 car length then i nailed it. 1st gear was short (got even with him) then into second second, SEE YA. I pulled away from him fast. I didnt bother pushing it in third as he was beat. So much for all wheel drive, how about big block torque. My wife and kid were behind me in her car at the light, she watched and was not pleased. I'd do it again!

 

[Hib Halverson]

Before you can get a useful answer, there are some questions you need to answer

1) Street driven? Or race car?
2) Do you want to have to use racing gasoline all the time?
3) What is your budget?
4) Are you wiling to change hoods to gain clearance for an aftermarket induction sys.?
5) manual or automatic trans?