www.the351cforum.com

1970 Maverick. My daily now.

cool, short wheel base light car.

Compression--
I was lucky back in 2004. I went to the Pates swap Meet and bought those Aussie 2v heads for $240 assembled. Gasket matched all the ports and smoothed the casting flashing in all ports. Took to machine shop and they put all new valves and had them put hardened exhaust seats. At the time i had a smaller Wolverine hydo cam. Strait pattern cam. 290/290 over all duration - 219/219 at .050 and .505/.505 lift. Good tq/ mid power cam. I had the performer intake like you have and a 650 Speed Demon. My opinion that intake sucks and had trouble after 5500 rpm. I tried the dedicated divided spacer and an open spacer and it did nothing. Ditched that intake and put on a Weiand X-Cellerator single plane with same carb. Dynoed 250hp/320tq at the wheels with a 2500 stall and 4.11 gears. Ran consistent 8.40 in the 1/8 mile with that combo. Then I put in that off shelf Comp Cams 282s cam and the 750 Mighty Demon and MSD-6AL and car went to consistent 8.20 and a best of 8.13 in the 1/8. Definitely not the fastest thing but fun. It probably would have ran the same with the 650 but i bought the 750 for later down the road which its on my car today.

so this was the dyno at wheels.
-engine:362C stock crank 20/20 - stock rods - Badger .060 cast flat tops w/2 reliefs
-Aussie 2v heads with Crane rocker conversion and Crane Energizer 1.7 roller rockers and comp pushrods
-Wolverine .505/.505 cam installed strait up- no degreeing
-Weiand Ex-Cellerator 7516 intake untouched and out of box BG 650 speed demon and 1" open spacer. On dyno it was lean about 3500rpm to peek so I only upped the rear jets 4 sizes and after that had an almost perfect AFR (look at bottom of dyno sheet)
-Duraspark distributor I pulled out of a truck with a 400M. Brand new factory Duraspark "blue" ignition box. If you look at the dyno, it breaks up at the end. That's not valve float but was because of the Duraspark ignition box. After I put the MSD box, it never did that again.
-Headman 1 5/8 long tube headers with 3" exhaust tube with a 3" h-pipe tube and 3" Flowmaster Deltaflow 40 series mufflers dumped .
-C4 trans - TCI 2500 stall and 4.11 gears and Hoosier QTP 26x9.5x15 tires.
Dyno day was right at 100 degrees in shop.
-Compression is around 10.00- 10.25 or so according to the compression calculators out there. not sure how far down the hole my pistons are.
-Flywheel hp im guessing 280-300 Tq about 360-390

This is the only video I uploaded with that combination above. At the Texas Motorplex. Sorry for shaky cam. My mom was recording and that was taken with an old style hand held camera.

https://youtu.be/-9IH5WDPYYM



dyno by 359daddy, on Flickr

That looks very good. I think I would look for peak torque in higher RPM and maybe the (power) curve rising a little more all the way to 6k rpm. Not sure if that is possible with the hardware plan I have but that would be ideal. Rising power curve would help it rev up easier, maybe with help of light weight flywheel. My car is light so that should not be a problem...

Yes more power is always better. Remember though, this dyno was at the wheels so all the drive train like converter slippage and i had my Hoosier QTP tires instead of street tires make it different than an engine dyno.
This engine had many different combos from 1998 - 2013 and then I put the current 359c in it. The car was my daily driver in high school and for a couple years after I graduated in 1998. I pulled the engine in 1998 because I thought i blew it up. Put on engine stand. Pulled the distributor and the gear fell off lol. So $365 later I had the short block with a "RV" cam. I already had Black Jack headers so the first mod was to put a cast iron 4v with a 600 Holley. It ran ok but the intake ports would never seal good to the heads. Then I bought that Edelbrock Performer intake. No difference in power. Back then Edelbrock did not offer the choke block off plate which sucked ass. Eventually they made one. It has been a fun engine. It still runs- sits in my stepdads garage. Wish I had the time to put it in my 88 FoxBody. All said and done its a fairly cheap build. The way it sits I have about $1800 with out carburetor. Back then the BG 750 Mighty Demon was $770 and I think its $830 or so now at Summit. The best 1/4 time with the old combo with the way it sits now with that Comp 282s cam was 12.75@106. Where do you live?

https://youtu.be/1pcKcbt1Ce4?t=40

I'm in Thousand Oaks near Los Angeles. I scored this complete drive train with the FMX for $300. The performer and the double pumper was extra $100. I have some room in my budget.

jacek

That's a good price. Personally and this is just what I would do and im sure more here will recommend the same thing- I would pull the heads. The leak down and compression might be ok but you really need to see what size the pistons are and the condition of the cylinders for taper or rust. Also, if it is original and it has the factory pistons then without close chamber heads I think its gonna be very difficult to get 10.00 compression with the factory 2v heads unless you mill the heck out of them. If it is a factory bore or .020 then Brent can damn near get you any size piston you need. I think he can get them in.005 increments. Back in 1998 when I pulled my factory 2v apart (that 362 I have) my dad had already rebuilt it with .030 pistons when I was in Elementary school. It had no less than 100,000 miles on his rebuild and when I pulled the pistons out every single top and middle ring were broken. I have no idea how that thing ran. Like I said, you never know whats under the heads until you pull them. Cleveland's will split cylinders and have hair line cracks so better to check now while engine is on the floor.

FMX trans. They are decent trans but I would only put one in if it was a full concourse restoration. The case on that thing damn near weighs the same as a 302 block lmao. And the 3 valve bodies and all those tubes inside are just unnecessary. Try to sell that thing and take what you can for it. I sold my original FMX for $50 with converter.

Yes that's kind of my plan. Actually the engine block was casted May12, 1970 so according the the spec sheet it should have 9.5:1 compression. The 4v was 11.4:1 in 1970. Getting to 10:1 or 10.5:1 should not require a lot of material removal from the heads I think. I may be completely off base. Brent please correct me here. That of course depends on the condition of the pistons and bores. If they are shot I'll get domed pistons to bump up the compression ratio. I don't care about the FMX but it's good to have the matching transmission just in case I change my mind. This engine was no slouch with 250hp and 300lbft of torque out of the box with the 2 barrel (albeit at pretty lazy 4600rpm red line). Refreshing the rotating assembly, small bump in the compression ratio, hotter cam, and hotter intake with a 4barrel should get me where I want it hopefully. Street-ability is a must. Don't care much about the fuel consumption or premium fuel I won't put enough miles on it for those to matter. I've also been reading good things about the stock exhaust manifolds so now I'm not so sure about putting on the headers. How much would that help with engine breathing given that the cast iron manifolds were considered very well flowing... but then there is the sound and the headers definitely win in that department...

The factory's claims on compression were pretty optimistic back then. Their tolerances for combustion chambers sizes were all over the map, as well as how much deck clearance they ran. My "72" cc open chamber heads measured closer to 76, my "64" cc closed chamber heads were close to 67, etc.
Just my opinion, but I wouldnt get hung up on what the compression is. I would make sure the heads were 72 cc's, maybe deck the block (cuz they are probably something stupid like .025 - .030 in the hole now), and whatever the compression ends up, that's what it is. If it's 9-1 or 10-1, you wont feel a difference in the seat-o-meter. The hardest running stock rod motor I had was barely 11.5-1, and I had a bunch that were over 12.5-1 and one that was over 13.5-1. And that 11.5-1 motor out ran them all.
And just my experience, but the 2v Performer is junk. I have one, ran it on my street car for awhile on a mild 2v motor. It was stock bore, stock pistons, unported 2v heads that still had the factory valves, had a mild Crower hydraulic cam, headers, the performer intake, 750 DP carb, a street fighter converter, and a 4.11 gear. It ran consistently high 13's (like 13.70s) in the quarter shifting at 5500 rpm. I pulled the performer, stuck an xcellorator on it, and didnt touch anything else (left the shift point alone as well.) Right out of the gate it ran 13.20s, and the street manners didnt change a bit either.

Thank you KV Racing, this is a very useful information. Sloppy manufacturing is (one of ) the reason tuners exist- often the first thing they do is bring the engines closer to the engineering specs. Your experience with the performer explains the 1" spacer and the missing choke plate in the setup I have. Since it ended up on a swap meet- this attempt at tuning the setup must have failed.