305Fan

Hey hey- I was wondering, whats the most powerful naturally aspirated 350 you've ever heard of...especially in a Camaro? What is the most power you can get from a bilt to the hilt 350? I mean, it can be a 355, 383 Stroker, etc- so long as it runs on Premium gasoline, and is not supercharged, turbocharged, or using nitrous. I mean, whats the maximum horsepower possible from a well built 350 small block (again, without nitrous or forced induction)? It can be carburated, or fuel injected...I am curious to know the answer.

Of course, anything goes. It can have alum heads, forged internals, etc. I suppose it would have to in order to be a viciously powerful mouse....

Thanks dudes and dudettes.

RB83L69

Anything goes?

How long does it have to last?

The NASCAR guys are getting just about 800 HP out of a 358 with a single 4-barrel carb and a flat tappet cam. Chevy, Ford, or Chrysler, they're pretty close. You could probably get more is you didn't care if it lasted as long as theirs have to; after all, they gotta go some practice laps, qualify, maybe more practice, then a 500 mile or whatever race.

Ann.racer92

a gazzilion. roughly.

you are asking a,, somewhat ignorant question. there are a million different chevy smallblocks out there with a million different combinations. even assuming that the cylinders were getting fed "correctly" or "to the max" you have to ask the question, "what's the max power and at what RPM?" in otherwords one engine may make more power then another but at some streetably unrealistic rpm resulting in a situation where the "better" put together more powerfull engine is actually slower then the other under certain circumstances.

you might try asking the best quarter mile times for a particular engine anyone has heard of or stick with your first question of the most power, but try limiting it to one cubic inch or another.

The FASTEST smallblock i have seen( i work at a dragstrip) was a 383 in a rail that was running 8.70's in the quarter. However there was also a NMRA(no nitro or forced air) stang with a STOCK body with a 5.0 in it that was running 9.10's. stock as in door slammin and fully steel cept for the fiberglass hood. dragster was faster but that 5.0 was street legal..

ede

i heard a couple of guys talking in mc donalds parking lot the other nite and they said 437 HP is the most anyone could get from a 350 no matter what. it may have been a lot of monkey spank, who knows for sure.

83_Camaro_83

It all depends how much money you have

mw66nova

iTrader: (13)

Rick moroso was making 850+ out of an n/a 331ci small block shifting at 9500rpm, but that was with 15:1 c/r etc, etc, etc.

Streetiron85

HAW!

Could it be bored and stroked, both?
With any heads available to man?

ME Leigh

If money is no object 1000+ hp.

You can make whatever you can pay for.

Marc 85Z28

iTrader: (3)

And although those engines are on the very wild side, they are still quite restricted. A better intake (fabricated sheetmetal) and larger carb could yield at least another 100HP.

Red Devil

I got it from the head Monkey, Ronald McFatold. 666 MAX!!

brutalform

Ditto

EvilCartman

iTrader: (1)

Lots, 1500+ hp.

John Millican

iTrader: (1)

One of the requirements was pump 92 octane. It seems most of you have ignored that small item. You're not getting 1500HP on 92 octane. Period.

Marc 85Z28

iTrader: (3)

All stations around here carry 93 octane, and all Sunocos carry 94 at the pump.

305Fan

Ok, I must admit the truth. I don't know much at all about engines. I have a little modicum of theoretical knowledge...but mostly from reading Jeg's catalogs and a few articles in Chevy High Perfomance and similar ragazines. Seriously dudes, about all I know how to do is change the oil and filter in a car. I love Camaros and stuff, but I have gotten ripped about ten new @sses from buying cars that needed real real serious work....ok for instance, DON' Laugh....I bought this 79 Z28 with a 400 sbc with a steel crank and lots of power....but I had my mechanic test the compression, and it turned out that number seven cylinder was dead. The block also had a strange damaged area near the starter, and as a result, was irreparable. I paid 800, but had to sell it for 300.

Ok, now that it is pellucidly clear that I don't know Jack ****e about engines, please forgive my "ignorance".

To Mr. Ann Marie or whatever....I beg to differ with you. My question was not ignorant at all. Not at all. It was quite intelligent a question...although I may have inadvertently failed to set up specific parametrics for the hypothetical engine of which I was inquiring. Thus being said, I should lay down some more ground rules for this motor.

Ok, you want specific? Ok dudes...suck on this.

My question is, how much horsiepower can you produce with a 355 Chevylet engine?

Again, it needs to have compression that is 'low' enough so that the engine can run on Premium pump gas. I don't know exactly what c/r would be called for, but lets set the limit at 11:1 compression.

Again, lets say its a 350 Chevy bored out 0.030 over. Not a 383 stroker, or a 358, or anything else. A 355. Dude.

Any heads are fine. Except for maybe those crazy cracker Aero heads. The make a Chevy have like 300 mo' Horsiepower over stock iron heads. That isn't cheating....but I want to stick with, for lack of a better term, conventional heads. I.E. AFR, or Trick Flow, or Brodix, or friggin World Products, or Dart, etc etc.

Lets say that my budget is 100, 000 bones. I ain't got that much money honey- but lets just pretend that I doo. Ok? Cool. Let's say I'm some maniac with a penchant for spankin' everyone's monkey (not literally...I mean, spank everyone racing on the streets). Let's say I just won 100,000 dollars from Publishers Cleary Dealy. Ok? I have a 1985 IROC that has been reinforced to withstand tons of power and torque. I wanna build the definitive 355 Small block Chevy, and spank everyone's proverbial @ss.

Ok- any pistons are fine. Forged, blah blah blah, Hypereucraptic, whatever. But again, keep the compression at 11:1 or lower.

Do steel cranks add power? I was told this is not so. What about Forged aluminum connecting rods? Wouldn't they add power, since they weigh less than, say, stock iron rods?

Ok, roll with it baby. But once again, No Laughing Gas, and no blowers, and no Sneaky Stinky Pete Nitrous systems. Just pump gas, a 355 Chevrolet starting with an iron block, and you may use any heads, internals, etc. How much power can you make dudes? Lets also say that we wish for the engine to last 10,000 miles. I know thats a short lifespan, but remember, I'm a half baked psycho who wants to make everyone suck on my tailpipes...and such on my dust. Yeah baby, yeah!!!!!!!!

Ok I THINK that should clarify things. Ok let me give you an illustrative example of one motor. Here are the characteristics of a motor that I am thinking of dudes....

1. JE Forged Ultralightweight (if available) 11:1 Pistons
2. Top quality Total seal rings
3. Cola forged steel crank
4. Oliver Rods
5. ARP bolts throughout
6. Meziere Electric water pump
7. Crane gold Roller Rockers
8. Fluidampr
9. March Pulleys
10. DUI Distributor
11. AFR CNC ported heads (just the best ones available)
12. Edelbrock ported dual plane intake
13. Custom Comp Cam, built for low end torque
14. Comp lifters
15. Titanium retainers
19. Royal Poo Poo Oil
20. Be Cool Radiator
21. Custom Crank Scraper
22. NGK Plugs
23. Taylor 10mm Plug wires
24. Hooker super Dooper Competition Ceramic coated headers (L/T)
25. 3in intermediate exhaust pipes (duals)
26. Am Thunder cat back (no cats, of course) but 1 Chamber mufflers
27. TH400 built to withstand 2000 Donkeypower (1500 horsepower)
28. K&N Black Plastic Big FLow thingie dealy with K&N filter
29. Demon 850 carb
30. Melling HV oil pump
31. Comp Hardened Pushrods
32. Regular PS pump
33. Jacobs Full Blaster Ignition
34. Comp Cams valve covers
35. Cloyes Heavy Doodie Timing Chain
36. BM (as opposed to B&M) Flexplate
37. Holley HV Fuel Pump
38. Trick flow gaskets
39. blah blah blah friggin Blah

Ok- see what I means?

Cause I saw the Speed O Motive ads on-line, and they have that Brutus motor. Oh yeah, and that Sportsman 383...which has 650 Horsepower. I wonder if that means 650 at the flexplate?

I know I know, I said that this engine isn't supposed to be a stroker. It seems curious to me that 383 Strokers seem to have mo' horsepower than 355's. The stoker crank does add torque, but I did not know that it contributed to horsepower....


Go for it dudes! Tell me about your Monster Mouse. Tell me about a 355 engine that would make mustangs owners run to the hills. Yeah baby!

Oh well, I don't hate all mustangs. The new ones are ok.

Let me know what choo think.


Peace, love, and Barbecue

me.

Streetiron85

McDonalds parking lot or magazines...
Which is the better source of reliable information?

I read somewhere that for $100K you can have a set of custom 32 valve heads fabricated that will bolt right up to a Goodwrench short block and it will make about 1200 HP.

... For about 2 seconds

It'll cost you an extra $10K for a bottom end that will hold together.

305Fan

Are those the AERO heads or what not?

Hmm.

Yeah, I have heard of the AERO heads. They are, of course, aluminum. They have like 32 valves, and are exotic. They don't cost 100 grand...they cost like 3 or 4 g's. They assert that the heads will add like 200 to 300 horsepower to any Chevy sb...as compared to stock iron heads.

CamarosRUS

WTF

no offense but you can tell you have gotten all your knowledge from a Jegs catalog.

but back to your ORIGINAL question, what is the most power a chevy 350 block can produce, running on pump gas, n/a????

im not sure but close to 1000hp. probably not 1000hp not anymore but close. it defenitly wouldnt be streetable, you probably wouldnt have any power down low, and you would have to uise the best damn pump gas on the planet.
it would have to be bored, stroked, and running some serious heads. but the cam you would need for all that power would make it unstreetable.

305Fan

Well, unstreetable defies the point, does it not?

Remember, I'm driving my car on the roads, making hippies VERY nervous when I rev the engine.

The point is to be a road warrior...sorry for the cliche....but to have something at least reliable enough to drive from My Momma's house to local nearby towns and scare everyone to megadeth.

If I ever come into serious money Honey, I might try to build that kind of motor...and drive the car without killing myself.

No stroking! No Stroking! Don't be a stroker! He he.

It has to be a 355, remember? Those are the new rules. And, again, it has to be able to eat pump QT Crappola gasoline. And, I might add, I would prefer that the cam is not as wild as can be, because I like low end torque. I know that the engine will be limited as a result, but thats the way I likes it! Yay! Yay! *Does Snoopy dances

Streetiron85

It would be lame NOT to stroke it, and use the largest bore possible while you're at it.
450+ ci, or you're just wasting your time.
You said you want power, right?
Get a Dart block, and some race heads... splayed valve or something like that, and have a tunnel ram fabbed up to fit it, and off you go to scare some old ladies and get yourself some tickets.

305Fan

Ok man thats cool- stroke it if you have to. Its just that some folks were gettin their panties all in a twist over not having specific limits, displacement, etc.

I heard about this special Monte Carlo...I think twas the Dale Earnhardt edition....like from the mid/late 1980's. It had an additional custom engine along with it (not installed), and the seller said that it was a 383 Stroker with 720 HP. I presume that this was all motor, no blower, etc.

I alzo alzo heard about this guy with a Mustang 5.0 that had a 302 engine making 1600 Horsepower. BUT it had twin blowers/superchargers.

We can make inferences about power production with twin turbos, if we know figures on na power. Yes?


I wonder....Man I have serious Adult ADD. LOL. I wonder what kind of engine was supposed to be in THE CAR. Remember that horror movie? Wow! That thing could rev real high. I mean Mr. Scary high. I know I know it was only a movie...but still, I wonder like what kind of engine they were using in the car, and/or for the dubbing parts when the car got pissed off and revved real real high.


Love,

me.

five7kid

iTrader: (14)

In order to justify the bandwidth this discussion is taking, let's confine it to an intended purpose. You want a street-driven vehicle with as much power as possible while using pump gas from the corner station. No power adders (why, I don't know, but that's what you said).

Given that, let's narrow a few things down:

Compression: Limited by head material, cam design, and octane of the fuel available. We already established the fuel part. With aluminum heads, you're stretching it at 11:1, most likely. 10.5:1 would be safer, and 10:1 would be more practical. Cast iron heads, drop it half a point. That's assuming a cam limited by the following:

Intake: An Edelbrock dual plane is not intended for all-out power. But, for a street vehicle, it's not a bad idea. Most likely, whatever else you do will be limited by that, so design the rest of it around the intake - that goes especially for the cam choice.

Displacement: Making power is a function of pumping air. The more mass you pump through the engine (with the appropriate ratio of fuel), the more power you make. You can do that by running a given displacement at a higher RPM, increasing the displacement of each revolution, or increasing the density of the air going into the displacement (power adders). Since you nixed the latter, you're either going to have to spin the thing faster, which has the negative effects of costing a lot more money to be able to withstand the higher speed, and reducing streetability; or increase the displacement. 383 strokers make more power than 350/355's because they put more air through the engine for each revolution. And, since horsepower is torque times speed (or, work over time), and a 383 makes more torque, the 383 will also produce more horsepower at a given RPM as a 350/355. A 400 will do even better. It's simple in theory, and it's simple in practice.

Transmission: You say TH400, not a bad choice. You'll have to choose the torque converter stall to match the torque/power characteristics of the engine. Most likely this will be fairly high, which isn't the best for getting around in stop & go driving or on the highway drive to Grandma's. Why not go for a 4L80E? It's a TH400 with overdrive and lock up torque converter added. It'll require a separate electronic controller, but budget wasn't listed as a primary limiting factor here.

Everything else is to support the power. Yes, an engine with aluminum rods will make more power than one with iron because they don't sap up as much of the power being produced accelerating the mass during those two stops and a big end swinging around every crank rotation - a factor that becomes more dominant as RPMs increase. Since they are designed for high power applications, they are also strong. A steel crank doesn't "make" more power, but again it is more capable of withstanding it. Basically, whatever budget you have, expect to spend about half of it making the power and the other half being capable of using the power. That starts at the engine - half on the power makers such as heads, cam, and intake; and the other half on withstanding it - crank, rods, pistons, block, etc. It goes beyond the engine as well: Make a bunch of power, expect to spend at least as much on a clutch/torque converter, transmission, driveshaft, rear end, and suspension to get it to the ground and stay together.

Of course, none of this addressed the legality of what you want to do. If you have to comply with emissions inspection and/or sniffer, life isn't going to be simple. And, most likely, even if you don't have those limitations, it still isn't going to be legal by the letter of Federal law. Having said that, back to the displacement discussion: Why isn't a big block on the table?

Now, unless further discussion is confined to specific applications that have a definable answer, we'll have to cut the discussion off.

F-BIRD'88

Don't know if these are absolutely the most powerfull 350 based street motors
but I'll bet they are top 10

http://www.araoengineering.com

(4 valve/ cylinder heads for SB chevys)

CamarosRUS

those are absolutly stunning...amazing...incredible whatever you want to call them. never heard of that before for the SBC but it looks like thats what you would need for the baddest 350. i would love a set of those

RB83L69

OK, let's get back out of the stratosphere and back to the real world for a minute.

As you can tell, the answers you get when you ask a question, depend very strongly on how you ask it. And, asking it the right way, can turn the answers from something useful, into total garbage.

If this is going on something that has to do street duty, i.e. idling in traffic, frequent starts & stops, halfway functional gas mileage, real-world pump gas, tens of thousands of miles lifetime, etc.; then alot of the monkey-spank gets eliminated right off the top. Including those Dominion heads.

About the cheapest combo you can get would be one involving Vortec heads. They're CHEAP because they are a stock head that came on vehicles that you can find in the junkyard. The trick to running them, is to stay within their limits AS BUILT, and don't get into modifying them. You will find that, even more so than most other stock heads, by the time you turn them from truck turds with 3-lb valves and 3-lb valve springs and no lift, into real "performance" pieces, you'll have more money in them than aftermarket heads. So, avoid all that, by working with what they come with.

Those heads, with a Comp XE268 cam, a Performer RPM intake, a 750 Holley 4-barrel, and a good set of headers, will give you close to 400 HP at the crank. No high-dollar Callies crank or Oliver rods are necesary; stock crank, stock rods with ARP rod bolts, and some good quality but cheap pistons such as the Speed Pro or KB hypereutectics, are all you need.

Your budget is a critical thing. All sorts of choices depend on that. As those of us who have been doing this for a few decades like to say, "Speed costs; how fast do you want to spend?" It also helps to have a more specific goal; either a HP goal, or a class limit, or a particular ET, or some such, to keep you focused on what gets you there vs what's total overkill. It's real easy to spend WAAAAAYYYYYY too much on a 650 HP bottom end that will never see 300 HP, in the name of "bulletproof"; in reality, it's just a waste of money.

Power lives in the heads. Pick a goal, then start there, and work your way outwards.

John Millican

iTrader: (1)

Those heads are $6500 for the set. That's a bit more then I got into my entire engine.

Grim Reaper

And don't forget that they DO NOT use standard 6 bolt SBC exhaust header flanges. You will need to get the 7 bolt Stahl/Hooker flange, so add "custom exhaust headers" to the bill if you are going Arao Heads.

CamarosRUS

very true but if i were dropping $6500 for my heads custom exhaust flanges shouldnt be too bad .

but as to what RB said...it cant be said much better. you can obviously make much more power from a N/A pump gas car BUT it wont be cheap, efficient, or streetable

Project

They were prolly talking about with stock manifold or heads...cause no one is that stupid

Bill Speed

What did the Gale Banks salt flat car use? I recall it ran 300MPHs.
I was of the mind 800+ or more HP from the 350 might not be possible w/o looking up, but running twin turbochargers or blowers might do the trick.
I'm anti-NOS hehe
Bill

Grim Reaper

And one thing to also remember when building MASSIVE HP...you need the transmission, rear-end, suspension, chassis, brakes, cooling system, roll cage, etc etc etc that will be required to handle the power of the engine. The engine is only a PART of the total bill.

So, once you figured out how much you are going to spend on the engine, double (or even triple) the amount to properly estimate the total cost.

That is often why people "down scale" their HP decision when it comes to "engine build"...because they can't afford the TOTAL cost. This is why I don't have Motown 427 SBC in my car right now...I can afford the engine, but I cannot afford the rest of the parts I need to make it work right and survive.

All that would happen is I would IMMEDIATELY toast my tranny (and wait to get a heavy duty one built). Next, I would toast my rear-end (and wait to get a heavy duty one built), etc etc etc.