The point of diminishing returns.....

Car guys have a tendency to always want the biggest and best of everything, and some of us, no matter how fast our cars go, are always chasing every last ounce. On the racetrack that's good, but if you drive the car at all sometimes that gets counter-productive. # 1. Gears and higher-stall converters. For small blocks these are great crutches to launch a car lacking in bottom-end torque. For big blocks, not so much. The main reason is traction-whether it's a 400 Pontiac or 454 Chevy or 440 Mopar-if the engine is already making 450+ lbs ft of torque at low rpm, especially with street tires, all a higher stall speed converter will do is blow the tires off. More wheelspin will slow you down. And gears don't always help a big-block. My 442 had 3.23:1 gears when I got it. After I rebuilt the 455, it was fast-smoking 5.0 Mustangs or Tuned Port Corvettes and Camaros was no problem-so I thought if I put 4.11s in, it would really rocket off the line. A funny thing-It didn't seem one ounce quicker in low gear. It was quicker in 2nd and 3rd, but not low! And the with the 3.23s it got about 16 mpg, with the 4.11s mileage dropped to about 11 mpg, and the motor was buzzing at 3,500 rpm on the freeway. The car was a little quicker in a drag race, but I didn't feel the gain was worth the loss of mileage or drivability. The same thing happened to a friend who had a Rat-motored Monte Carlo. It ran 12.80s in the 1/4 with 2.73:1 gears, and 12.40s with 3.73:1s!!  He, too felt the loss of drivability, top-end, and easy cruising on the freeway wasn't worth the 4/10s in the 1/4. I'm not saying gears don't matter, but maybe not as much as you think on certain cominations. # 2. Bigger isn't always better. My brother has a GTO with a 400 built with the Edelbrock Torker II package-intake, cam, headers, Msd ignition. It's backed by a Turbo 350 and the rear end is the 3.36 ratio it came with. It has 14 inches of vacuum at idle, will literally spin it's tires as long as you want to stay on the throttle. It idles at 800 rpm, pulls hard to 6,200 and he's been beaten on the street or at the drags 2 times in 8 years. It runs consistent high 12s. Now friends say-and their right-"If you got a bigger cam, and RAIV / Edelbrock heads, and a Performer RPM or Victor manifold and some 4.30 gears, you could get into the 11s." I don't doubt it, but the bigger cam wouldn't idle as good and might need a bigger converter which would mean more wheelspin. And with the bigger heads, cam, and carb and intake, we'd be trading a lot of low-speed and mid-range torque for top-end speed. The car wouldn't be nearly as pleasant or as much fun to drive. # 3. Sometimes that "Last ounce" can bite you in the ass. Hot Rod magazine did a manifold test on small-block Chevys a while back. They found that the Edelbrock Performer RPM "Air Gap" and Weiand "Air Strike" manifolds-that raised the carb up and allowed air to flow under the plenum made 10-15 hp more than the conventional design. In sunny California, this was great. However, they got a ton of letters from angry people in the midwest and Rocky mountain states saying that when they installed this manifold on their cars, in fall and winter after driving the car and then parking it for a few minutes-like going to lunch-or shopping at the mall- they experienced carburator icing and their cars were virtually impossible to start in cold weather! Several of them said they were going to put their old manifold back on and gladly give up that 10-15 hp, to have a car that starts reliably!!  So be careful when searching for "a little bit more."  Mastermind