Stock Looking but Nasty......

A lot of Musclecar enthusiasts want their cars to look stock, but be wicked fast. This can be accomplished with a few "stealth" modifications that no one would know about, unless you told them.  # 1 The old saying-"There's no substitute for cubic inches, except cubic dollars"  is still true. If you can afford it, obviously you could swap your 383 Chrysler for a 440, or your 396 Chevy for a 454.  If you have to "Run what you brung" I.E.- use the engine that came with the car, you can still go bigger for very little investment.  If your rebuilding an engine anyway, it doesn't cost much more to install a stroker crank kit. The most popular are 350 Chevy into 383, 302 Ford into 347, 360 Mopar into 408, 400 Pontiac into 455, and 400 Mopar into 451.  # 2 Camshaft.  As much as we love our "Classic" muscle cams from Crane or Lunati, you have to realize that most of these are based on 1965 cam profiles and are not computer optimized. Modern cam designs from Edelbrock, Competition Cams, Crane, etc-will make more power, idle better, get better gas mileage, and generally just blow away the "classics" on the dyno and on the street or strip. And, no one knows what cam you have in your engine. # 3. Cylinder heads. A lot of guys won't go so far as to put aftermarket aluminum heads on their musclecars, but you can play with factory iron heads, especially if your not worried about casting numbers. A few examples-1981-86 305 Chevy "Smog" heads have 58cc combustion chambers, as opposed to the 76cc chambers on most 350s. This will raise compression on a 350 from 8.2:1 to 9.8:1. 1996 and later Vortec heads have 64cc chambers, and flow better than many aftermarket heads. 1992 and later Dodge 318 and 360 "Magnum" heads flow better than the legendary 340 heads. Like with Chevys and Vortecs, the Magnums will need an aftermarket intake, but that's hardly a big deal. 1975-79 Pontiac "6X" heads flow better than any Pontiac head except the legendary and rare, RAIV heads. I could go on, but you get the picture. # 4. Blueprinting. You can port match your intake and exhaust manifolds to maximize performance. # 5. Mechanical advantage. Swapping a 3.08 axle ratio for a 3.73 will improve acceleration drastically without hurting fuel economy or freeway cruising speed too much. Automatics can benefit from shift kits and higher-stall speed converters. These mods will give you a stock-looking, but wicked fast machine. Mastermind