More big bucks for less performance.....

Read an article in a street rod magazine about a guy who was building '32 Ford hot rod. The owner wanted it to be unique, yet "Old-school" so instead of using the ubiquitous 350 Chevy or 289 / 302 Ford that 99% of builders of these projects do he decided to go with a 389 Pontiac. Refreshing, and doubtless a torquey big-block Pontiac will move the "Deuce Coupe" along with greater alarcity than a small-block Chevy or Ford, probably for less money and look cooler to boot-especially if he went with a Tri-power or Dual-Quad induction setup. I'm not dissing the idea; I think it's great. My dad and I actually tried to buy "Project '32" from Popular Hot Rodding back in 1978. It was a '32 Ford 5-window with a Ram Air IV 400 Pontiac engine backed by a TH400. It ran 12 flat on street tires, through the mufflers. Unfortunately-another reader showed up with the cash a few hours before we did. Anyway-back to the current article-they did a standard rebuild-boring the block .030 over, new pistons, rings and bearings, polishing the crank, re-sizing the rods, new oil pump, etc. That's standard procedure. Then they went off the rails. Of course-they had to have a hydraulic roller cam. Like I said in an earlier post-if you have a late-model Small or Big Block Chevy, Small-block Ford or Chrysler "Magnum" engine that had a roller cam from the factory-that's the only way to fly. But older stuff especially anything other than a Chevy-is very expensive to convert. High-Performance Pontiac did an article on this. By the time you get the raocker arm studs, rockers, pushrods, cam and lifters, cam button, lifter retaining "spider" ( so the lifters don't drop out the bottom of the lifter bores and gouge the cam )  springs, retainers etc-your looking at $1,800. As opposed to $200 for a conventional flat tappet hydraulic cam from Crane, Lunati, etc. Then they re-did the small-port pre-64 "Bathtub" heads, and spent $1,600 buying and refurbishing an old '59-64 tri-power setup. By the time they were done they had over 5 grand in the motor. Then they dyno'd it and it made 352 hp and 433 lbs of torque. Big deal-a bone-stock 1964 Tri-Power GTO was rated at 348 hp and 424 lbs of torque. And the '59-64 manifold won't work with '65 and later heads-you'd need a '65 or '66 unit to do that. And we all know that the '67 and later heads are the best ones for performance. ( Other than RAIV's or Edelbrocks. ) For a lot less than the $3,400 they spent on the roller cam and induction-they could have put a stroker crank assembly in it and later iron heads that would have netted 461 cubes and a lot more grunt ( like 450 -475 hp ) in a stock looking package.  Or they could have stuck with the 389 short-block and bought the Edelbrock Performer RPM top end package ( cam, heads, and intake ) which makes 422 hp and 441 lbs ft of torque on a 9.5:1 400..  They could have used Edelbrock heada and a Barry Grant "Six-Shooter" setup-( a modern take on the Tri-Power setup that fits '65-79 models ). That BG claims  makes the same power and more torque as the "RPM" setup. Or they could have used the Edelbrock P65 dual-quad intake and the matching Perfomer heads and Torker-Plus cam and made 402 hp and 439 lbs of torque, while having 15 inches of vacuum at idle. You may say they wanted it to look as original as possible-but that argument won't fly-it was going in a '32 Ford, not a '62 Grand Prix or '65 GTO!!  They could have had way more "Bang" for the same or less bucks if they'd used the right combination of parts. And I hate to harp on the same point-but it's being cross-bred into a Ford for God's sake-not a pristine 2+2 or Bonneville or GTO convertible!!! Who cares if it's stock or not?  Sorry just had to vent that. Mastermind