It's the whole package, not just horsepower...

It's funny how the internet works. I guess "cookies" or "web crawlers" bring up random stuff depending on what type of google search the user is doing.  Because of this I get hate mail for stuff I posted 5 years ago. A recent one was regarding a post I made about lowering your sights a little-i.e.-You may not be able to find or afford an LS6 SS454 Chevelle, but you could get an SS396, or a Boss 302 might be beyond your means, but a 351W Mach 1 would do nicely. I stated that way back in 1994-( That was when I bought the H / O ) I was frustrated looking for a GTO when I ran across my 1973 Hurst / Olds 442. I said I loved the car because it was really nice to drive, looked badass and was quick enough to back up the image, that I didn't have to take crap from "5.0" Mustang drivers. I got all kinds of profanity laced emails saying I was delusional and offers to race for thousands of dollars or "Pink Slips" from assholes who owned "5.0" Mustangs. I'll duplicate my response here. Everyone knows that the fuel-injected 1987-93 Mustangs were quicker than the 1983-86 Carburated models. I stated before that various buff magazines had tested "5.0" Mustangs and that the 1/4 mile times varied-the slowest being a 15.29 and the quickest being a 14.72.  I couldn't find a road test of a '73 Hurst / Olds, but I did find two for a "regular" Cutlass 442 with the 455 / TH400 powertrain. One ran a 14.65, the other a 14.90. I'd say that pretty much cleared the air about me "not taking crap" from "5.0" Mustang drivers. I then got a bunch of hate mail from "5.0" owners saying "Big deal you beat a stock Mustang" "But I have-( Pick one ) a blower or nitrous or an Edelbrock or Trick Flow Top-end kit ( heads, cam and intake ) challenging me to drag races. Ironically, shortly after buying the H / O-it spun a crank bearing. Having to rebuild the 455 anyway-I decided to spice it up with headers, a Lunati cam with 224 / 234 duration ( @ .050 ) and 496 / .520 lift, an Edelbrock Torker intake and 750 Carb, and an MSD HEI distributor. I also decided to replace the stock 3.08:1 gears with 4.10:1s to really put all that newfound power to the ground. I gleefully accepted the challenges saying that these assholes should come find me at Hot August Nights events and that I would gladly race their modified Mustangs with my modified 442. Now, as it did back then, it made me shake my head at how people who have never been on a racetrack perceive how drag races go. I remember a muscle car drag event I went to several years ago. A guy with a 1970 W30 455 Olds 442 was matched up against a 1966 Nova SS with an L79 327. The announcer joked about what a mismatch it was-saying "Come on guys, a small-block Nova tugging on Superman's cape? " The announcer, the crowd, the 442 owner and everyone but me was shocked when the Nova won easily. I knew the Nova was going to win. Here's why: A 1970 442 weighs 4,070 lbs. The 455 was rated at 370 hp. A 1966 Nova weighs 3,100 lbs. The L79 327 is rated at 350 hp. Guess what? 20 hp wasn't enough to overcome 1,000 lbs of extra weight!!  Further-the 442 was an automatic with 3.42:1 gears, and the Nova was a 4-speed with 4.10:1s.  So in addition to a huge power to weight advantage, the Nova also had the mechanical advantage of stiffer gearing.  It amazes me that people can't grasp this. A friend of my brothers has a late-model Dodge Ram Crew-Cab 4WD pickup with the 5.7 liter Hemi rated at 390 hp. It moves pretty good for a big truck-but this guy who's parents drove VW's and who's last car was a Honda Civic thinks it's a rocket. He challenged my brother to race him with his GTO. My brother and I were rolling on the floor laughing. My brother's '69 GTO has a 400 that we built from a junkyard engine for less than $2,000. I've stated before that it dyno'd at 381 hp and 430 lbs of torque. Not bad for a cheap rebuild on a junkyard engine. Anyhow the guy with the truck would not shut up until my brother agreed to race him, and was utterly flabbergasted when the GTO blew his doors off by about 10 car lengths. "How can that be?" "My truck has 390 hp, 9 more than your car." he said-dead serious. When my brother stopped laughing again he explained. "It's power to weight ratio." "Yeah, we both have roughly 400 hp." "My GTO weighs 3,730 lbs." "According to Car and Driver, a crew-cab Dodge Ram like yours weighs 5,790 lbs".  "Of course I blew your doors off." "I'm pulling 2,000 lbs LESS weight!!"  A couple of car salesmen I know learned this. One had a 400, 4-speed '77 Trans-Am, the other had a 350 / Automatic '74 Ventura GTO. Both were rated at 200 hp. The T/A had 3.23:1 gears, the GTO had 3.08:1s. So power and gearing were roughly the same. The GTO won by about a car length and a half. How? Power to weight ratio. A '77 T/A weighs 3,890 lbs. A '74 Ventura weighs 3,278 lbs. 600 less pounds gave it the win. You have to remember the rule of thumb-which is "All other things being equal, a 3,000 lb car with a 300 hp engine will run just as fast as a 4,000 lb car with a 400 hp engine."  The key words here are "All other things being equal". The monkey wrench is mechanical advantage-like a 4-speed, or a high stall converter,a shift kit or stiff gears. Here's a perfect example. I got a ton of hate mail when I said I beat my friend's 427 powered '67 Impala in a drag race with my dad's '65 Pontiac Tri-Power 421 Catalina 2+2. Because there's no way a 421 Pontiac can outrun a 427 Chevy, right?  Here's the facts. Both cars weighed about 4,400 lbs. Both had TH400 transmissions. The Tri-Power 421 was rated at 376 hp. The 4bbl 427 was rated at 390 hp. We all know that 14 hp on paper is not going to make an ounce of difference in a real-world drag race. So weight, cubic inches, and hp are all dead even. The Impala had 3.31:1 gears and an open rear end, the 2+2 had 3.90:1s a posi, and a TransGo shift kit. That was enough to let me get about  1/2 a car length off the line. That was it. Neither car could gain an inch. We did it 3 times and the results were exactly the same. I'd jump him by half a car length and hold onto it until we let off at 90 or 100 mph. Now if the 2+2 had 3.23:1 gears or the Impala had 3.90:1s the outcome might have different. Traction makes a huge difference. Besides the pumped-up RAIII 400 and 4.33:1 gears, one thing that made my Judge so brutally quick was the fact that it had Lakewood coil-spring traction bars, and I was running N50X15 Mickey Thompson "Hot-n-Sticky" tires on the rear. They were about 12 inches wide, and as advertised when they got hot, they were very sticky. I could pop the clutch at 4,300 rpm and rocket off the line with very little wheelspin. Now what poor bastard with regular street tires-who can launch at maybe 2,500-3,000 rpm if his car is a stick before he frys the tires-or the same if he's got a stall converter on an auto-is going to compete with that?  And once I get a car length or two or three lead-the RAIII on steroids is going to hold on to it, or maybe even open it up more. To catch me you'd need a SERIOUS package-like L88 or LS6 with 4.56:1 gears, or Hemi with 4.90:1s serious-to have a prayer. And never under-estimate a light small-block car. Back in the day-my cousin had a '63 Nova with a 283 that he bored to 301 inches and pumped up backed by a 4-speed and 4.88:1 gears. It was brutally quick, because it only weighed about 2,700 lbs. Another friend that had a 340 Dart that stunned a lot of big-block cars,and his brother had a pumped up 273 powered '65 Barracuda that was awful fast. A buddy of mine with a 440 Road Runner was shocked one night when a 302 Maverick showed him it's taillights. Remember the Chevy Monza? A light little coupe that could be had with a 4 cylinder, a 231 V6, or a V8. The buff mags called them the "Factory V8 Vega". Most had a 305 with a 2bbl that wheezed out 145 hp. But for a couple years-1975 and '76 I think-the 305's weren't California emissions certified. So if you ordered a V8 Monza in California you got a 350! Their pretty rare, but a guy I knew had one back in high school and it was damn quick. Especially after he put a 4bbl carb, some dual exhausts and a shift kit in it.  My dad and I put a 350 Chevy in a Datsun 240Z for a guy and it was so fast that he got kicked off the track for not having an 8 point cage and a driveshaft safety loop! Which you need if you run quicker than 12 flat-or 11.50 on some tracks!!  It only weighed about 2,300 lbs-and the warmed-over 350 didn't weigh any more than the Nissan 6 it replaced. But it had more than double the power. So don't summarily dismiss someone because of a horsepower rating you read in a magazine. They may surprise you and blow your doors off.  Mastermind