I have a 3rd gen camaro drag car, it's stripped out and has a built 4.56 geared 10 bolt. What should I build to make it FAST (9s-10s). It will not be a street driven car, track only. I was thinking small block with powerglide and nitrous, but kinda unsure of what exactly I will need. $5,000 to work with.

Quarter or eighth mile?

9's or 10's in the 8th is nothing special. Doing it in the 1/4 takes a lot more.

Do you want to run 9's or 10's in the 1/4?. There's a lot of different requirements to run both. A car running in the low 10's only needs a roll bar. To run into the 9's you'll need a full cage along with a bunch of other things. The cage adds a lot more weight so you'll need to make a lot more HP to overcome the extra weight.

My car is a completely gutted out race car. My race weight sitting on the starting line is still just under 3100 pounds. My whole cage is around 260 pounds. It's hard to make a third gen production car much lighter and have all the stuff to run quicker than 9.99. OK, not hard but expensive. It would be cheaper to just build a lightweight tube chassis car. 2400-2600 pound race weight doesn't need as much HP to run the same ET as a heavier car.

Since you're limiting yourself to $5000, you don't have a lot to work with.

Sub Frame Connectors
Slicks
Front skinnies
Lightweight aluminum rims front and rear
A well built 383 or 406 with about a 200 shot of NOS should dip you at least into the 10's. I managed a high 11 (at altitude) with a NA 383. It'll be hard to get into the 9's unless you can make around 700 HP which isn't going to be cheap with a SBC.

I guess 10s in the quarter would be a more reasonable goal with my budget.

Thanks for help Stephen. I bought this car for $200 and I'm trying to figure out what I want to do with it. It might be more worth it to go the big block route then if I can get more bang for the buck that way.

The guy I bought it from told me he ran 11s with a stock 400, turbo 400, slicks, and nitrous before the motor blew. Car has tranny mount torque arm still, no LCARBs, no SFCs, and has been lowered (springs cut). I dunno if the guy was lying or not.

BIGBLOCK Once you have one you'll never go back ! IDK what it would cost so maybe some members with RATS can add some advice as compared to a Mouse... Smallblocks can be AWSOME don't get me wrong!! The Bride & I will be going RAT in 2010. Stephen IROC is a great guy to bounce ideas off of. If I had the $ I'd have jumped at the Canfield heads!
(edit)Sorry--thats Stephen 87 IROC

Unless you have a big budget, start small and upgrade when required. Start off with the basics. Drop in a reliable engine and go racing. Even if you start off running low 12's or high 11's, it's cheaper to race. As your budget improves, you can make the car faster.

10 years ago when I bought my car, it was running 14's. Over the years, many things changed and I'm now into the mid to low 9's. The faster you go, the more expensive and harder it is to go faster.

In Canadian dollars, I estimate my engine's replacement cost is around $20,000 although I didn't build it for that much. I got lots of Ebay deals on parts. The replacement cost just for my heads is around $5000. My headers if I had to buy them new and get them coated are worth $1000-$1500. My Dart Big M block was $3000 and still needed to be machined, cam bearings, etc.

Yes, you can use a lot of production parts but the more HP you make, the less reliable production parts become. For your limited budget, the chances of you making something that can reliably get in the 10's and stay consistent isn't guaranteed. A 500 HP 383 or 406 can get you into the 11's and a shot of NOS could get you into the 10's but the majority of racing is brackets and I doubt you'll be using NOS to bracket race. It's harder to get that consistency.

Although it's nice to go fast, speed doesn't win a bracket race. Race within your budget. If you want to race in some sort of heads up type class, find out what you're allowed to do or not do before building a car.

I have a 400 SBC in my garage but have more BBC parts than anything else. Even my daily driver has a 454 in it. I wouldn't go back to a SBC in a race car and after installing alcohol injection on my car, I won't go back to using carbs.

The Canfield heads are still available. Lots in interest but nobody is willing to buy even though the price is very fair.

Using a BBC doesn't mean you'll go faster but the BBC has a lot more potential to make more HP easier. A relatively mild 454 can run 12's while it takes a lot more to get a SBC to do the same thing. By the time you get into the low 10's, the 454 is becoming a powerful engine and if you were trying to do the same thing with a NA SBC, it would be reaching extreme.

It's easier to make HP with cubic inches and the potential for power in a factory BBC head is much easier than a SBC head. A good aftermarket SBC head starts to have good flow characteristics a little more than where a factory BBC starts. Bigger valves and port and polish a factory BBC and it out performs an aftermarket SBC head. The bigger engines need to breath. Building a big SBC can cost more than building a small BBC that performs the same.

If your $200 car is rust free, you have a good platform for a nice race car.

Interesting stuff. I'm going to save up till I can spend more like 10 or 15k on it then. I have my other projects to work on in the meantime. Preciate it bud!

11.49 & faster also requires a roll bar. Better check with your track sanctioning body, T-tops have been considered the same as a convertible, which means a roll bar at 12.99.

Ditto Stephen's comment about speed and consistency. Unless you need to get under a certain time to get into a class you want to run, there are few advantages to being faster (other than giving the other guy a chance to red light first and scaring the less knowledgeable slower racers).

Let's see, how many faster cars did I take out this weekend? Oh, yes, here it is - total of 8 . . .

The real question you should have asked is

1: I have $5000 to spend, what can I do to make a strip only car?

or

2: What's it going to take to make a low 10 second third gen.

Either of those questions would have got a lot of better responses. We're not trying to discourage you, but too many people think it's easy or cheap to build a 10 second or quicker car without realizing just how much goes into building or running a car that fast. I blame it on all the misleading magazine articles and all the latest automotive TV shows. They always make it look a lot easier than it really is.

I'm never going to say it can't be done as some people just manage to get the right combination of parts cheap enough to do it but for the average person, it just doesn't happen.

It's like reading in a magazine about a "low buck engine buildup" then reading that they had an old set of Brodix heads sitting on the shelf. Cost of heads for buildup $0. Sure it's low buck when you get performance parts for free but that's not what the buildup should be about.

Building a race car is the same thing. It's not just about the engine. Since your $200 car doesn't even have SFC, that's going to be needed as part of the build. Ditch the factory torque arm for a nice adjustable aftermarket one etc. That's all going to eat into your budget. Look for stuff like that in the classified section and you can save a lot over buying new. Building a high HP engine doesn't mean much if you can't get the power to the ground.

It's a package deal. I'd start by getting the car built to handle the power you want to eventually use. Put in a roll bar even if you only have an engine that makes you run 13's. Eventually you'll get below 11.50 where you'll need it. If you get into the 9's, you'll need a full cage. Nothing stopping you from installing a full cage into a slower vehicle except it adds weight. Beef up the driveline to handle future power. Using a lessor HP engine in the beginning isn't going to hurt the driveline before you make a lot more power.

Make the car light. Since it's strip only, the best advice is to remove everything not required for speed or safety. It doesn't take much to gut 200-300 pounds out of a track only car. There are plenty of threads on weight reduction.

I have 89 Formula with stock 95 LT1 converted to carb. with solid cam, 150 shot th350 with 2.73 gear. no posi. 10 pt cage gutted. runs 10.90's I spent more but u can do this combo for $5000

best bet is to start with a fox mustang

knowing what i know now and if i were less attached to my car than I am, i'd start all over and have built a fox.

Yeah, those are much better questions. I should have thought it out more.

Please forgive my lack of gearing knowledge.A sb w//4:56 rear-would that put it @ extreme redline rpm @ the top end?How would a bb handle that ratio?I know cam//heads//exhaust matched helps breathing & power but how does it relate to power//weight//gearing if at all?

I have a 540 BBC. 4.86 gears, 32" tall tires and a 6000 stall converter. I shift the engine at 7500 rpm and cross the finish at 7500.

I tried 4.57 gears earlier this year. Although I was still shifting at 7500, the car crossed the finish line at around 7200. My camshafts powerband is from 4500-7500 rpm. I have my top end rev limiter set at 7800.

I would say search around for a complete 350 out of a sububan or GM truck. Try to get it complete with everything so it's all there to pick from. You can find them dime a dozen on Craigslist or other classifieds. Get one with a 4 bolt main and a later model that has the hydro roller cam. $600-800?

Get a set of used long tube headers and some turn downs. $400-500??

Get a trans of your choice. 700r4 will bolt right in and converters can be found for under $300. Turbo 350's and 400's are great but require new X-members and torque arm relocations.

Look for a good used intake and holley 650 carb. I'm sure they can be found dime a dozen. $400-500??

Get a brand new NOS Cheater kit. 150 to 250 horse. $500??

go racing!

As "Big Block Stephen" said... You can always make upgrades from there but at least your in the game now.

It's actually somewhat the path I built my car on. I just started knocking out the big stuff and topped it off with tyhe little stuff when the money was there.

There's alot to absorb from this thread.I think there's more to it than motor//gears.Something about tire height too?

Is the saying true about tire size--short is quick::tall is fast...& tire height can "make the motor" run as if it has a different cam?

As for speed/rpm, you can have a taller tire with a deeper gear give the same rpm/mph as a short tire with a economy gear.

The biggest difference is torque multiplication. Lets say you have 500 pounds of torque going through a TH400. First gear is 2.48 so 500 x 2.48 = 1240. Now put that through a diff with 3.42 gears and you have a torque multiplication of 4241 pounds. Those 3.42 gears are probably turning 26" tall tires. Now you change the gearing to 4.56. To keep the same rpm range of the engine, the tire size needs to be increased. I'm not going to work out formulas but lets say the tires are now 28.5" tall. Based on tire height and gear ratio, the car should run the same speed since the rpm range is being kept the same. However, you've changed the diff gears from 3.42 to 4.56 so that 1240 pounds of torque coming out of the tranny now go through deeper gears. 1240 x 4.56 = 5654 pounds of torque. By changing the diff gears, you've increased the amount of torque to get the vehicle moving by over 1400 pounds. 1400 pounds more torque is going to get that car moving a lot quicker. Although the MPH should stay the same, the ET will decrease because the car is moving off the line so much faster.

The other benefit of a taller tire is the contact patch. Everyone wants a wider tire. A taller tire is better because it puts a longer contact patch on the ground. A point on the tire will stay in contact with the ground longer as the tire rotates. Once the tire height is established, width can be determined by the width of the available wheel well.

When building a drag car, always stuff the tallest tire possible under the fenders than figure out which gear ratio works best to keep the engine in it's peak operating range. A drag car should cross the finish line at or just before the engine's shift point while in high gear (no overdrive). If using a shift light, the light should come on just as you cross the finish or come on somewhere between the 1000' mark and the finish.

Tire height and gear ratio need to be combined to achieve that result but converter stall will also have an effect on it. My converter has less slippage with 4.86 gears than it has with 4.57 gears. I ran roughly the same ET and MPH with both gears but the car just feels better with the deeper gears. If I wanted to use the 4.57 gears, I should also use a converter with less stall speed.

It will be a while before I do this. Still got another project at the moment.

Thanks man, that is some good stuff!