More on "Good Deals" and "Budget" projects....

Sometimes when reading the buff magazines and their "Budget" projects you think "Who's budget?" Jay Leno's?  Donald Trump's?  Here's a couple that had me shaking my head. One was "Junkyard Jewel". This one featured a 455 Pontiac that they bought from duh-a junkyard. When they were done they were happy that it made 440 hp and 460 lbs ft of torque. and it cost "only" $4,400! Really. The 400 in my brother's GTO made 381 hp and 430 lbs of torque and cost $1,900 to build. If we really needed the extra 59 hp and 30 lbs of torque-I think we could get it for a lot less than another $2,500!!  Part of the reason the 455 was more than double the cost of our 400 was the magazine used Edelbrock heads which cost over 2 grand a pair for Pontiacs. Our whole engine build didn't cost 2 grand. I realize the magazines have to showcase their advertisers products to stay in business, but in this case-the 455 came out of a '76 Gran Prix-it had 6X heads on it. Which except for RAIV's ( which the Edelbrocks are patterned after ) are the best breathing factory heads to start with. I know '76 455s had an anemic 7.6:1 compression ratio. But they were completely rebuilding the engine. Pontiac heads can be milled .060 to raise the compression a full point, and they were getting new pistons anyway. With the head work and custom pistons they could have easily raised the compression to something in the 9-9.5:1 range which is about all you can run with pump gas and iron heads anyway. Even if the Edelbrock heads were worth 40 hp and 50 lbs of torque-which the difference is probably more like 25 hp 30 lbs ft-but I'm just saying-they'd have still had over 400 hp and 400 lbs of torque and the whole project would have cost like $2,200 instead $4,400. Half the cost. I'm not slamming Edelbrock heads-I think their great, have used them in the past and probably will in the future-I just think on a project where you were trying to keep costs to a minimum spending $2,000+ for a set of heads you don't really need is frivolous. Another one was hopping up a ZZ4 crate engine. If you don't know-the ZZ4 was very popular 350 Chevy crate engine. They were pretty hopped up from the factory. They had 10:1 Keith Black pistons, L98 Corvette aluminum heads, a roller cam with .474 / .510 lift, and the original Z/28 / LT-1 style aluminum intake with a 770 Holley carb. They were rated at 355 hp and 418 lbs of torque. What made them such an awesome street engine was they had more than 350 lbs of torque from 1,800-5,200 rpm. I had one in my Hurst / Olds for a while after I grenaded the 455. If I didn't tell people-when they drove the car-they'd swear it was a good running 455 Olds. They were shocked to see a small-block Chevy under the hood, and that it had that much low-end torque. Anyhow Hot Rod did this article on hopping one up. A single-plane intake and a bigger cam netted them another 70 hp. 425 hp from a still streetable engine is pretty damn good. They wanted to increase the output by 100 hp. They added a set of bigger Trick Flow aluminum heads. This got them another 40 peak hp and attained their goal. However- here's the kicker. The 40 hp increase came  at 6,100 rpm!!. On the dyno sheet the "Antiquated" L98 heads were equal to or within 5 hp and 5 lbs of torque at every rpm up to 4,600!!  Now how often are you going to be above 4,700 rpm? The Trick Flows didn't show more than 25 more hp until over 5,000 rpm.  In an all-out race car-yes that might be worth it. In a street / strip machine, maybe not. Further, the Trick Flow heads cost $1,400. For $1,400 they could have got a 200+hp nitrous system, a higher stall converter, some stiffer rear end gears,-all stuff that would have netted a larger performance increase than 40 hp in a 500 rpm window on the top end. And agian- a ZZ4 crate engine cost about 5 grand to begin with. Now you want to throw another 2 grand plus at it?  And now my question is if you have that much money and need to go that fast, why aren't you buying a 454 instead of a 350?  By contrast another magazine did a budget 350 buildup. They bought a short-block from Pep Boys for $650. They bought some Vortec heads from Scoggin-Dickey, and an Edelbrock Vortec-compatible Performer RPM manifold, a hot roller cam, and some hooker headers. It dyno'd at 395 hp and 410 lbs of torque and cost $2,600. Now that's a "budget" build. All I'm saying is be careful and don't fall into "Gotta Haves". For example-I'll use the ubiquitous small-block Chevy. Every time you read an article about hot-rodding a small-block Chevy you see this list of "gotta haves". "You gotta have a 4-bolt main block"  "you gotta have a forged crank" "You gotta have "Pink" rods" "You gotta have 2.02 heads with screw in studs" etc, etc. Their half-right. If your building a NASCAR Nextel Cup engine that has to go 7,800 rpm for 500 miles at Daytona-yes you need all the beef you can get. But for a street car that only sees the occasional weekend trip to the drags-or even a "Street Stock" or "Hobby Stock" circle track racer that runs a 50 lap main event on a 1/4 mile or 1/2 mile track-you don't need any of that. Two-bolt main blocks and cast cranks are fine as long as rpms don't constantly go over 6,500. Cast pistons are fine. "Standard" heads and "Hi-Performance" heads have exactly the same size intake and exhaust ports. Standard heads have 1.94 / 1.50 intake and exhaust valves. Hi-Perf heads have. 2.02 / 1.60 valves. Any competent machine shop can easily put the larger valves into standard heads. As for screw in studs-my friends and I have raced cars for over 30 years,and I have NEVER seen a pressed in stud pull out of a head. Not ever. I've seen broken pushrods, broken rocker arms, broken valvesprings, but I have never seen a stud pull out of a head. I've also never seen a cast crank fail. I've seen spun main bearings and spun rod bearings-but that has nothing to do with whether the crank is cast or forged. You don't need to spend a ton of money on custom rods. Stock Chevy rods are virtually bullet-proof. Chrome-moly rod bolts are good insurance. regardless of make-95% of rod failure occurs at the bolt.  But if you don't know this and no one tells you-you'll innocently spend hundreds or even thousands that you dont' need to. That's all I'm saying. So do some research before you plunk down your credit card or hard-earned cash on some "Gotta Have" that you don't really need.