ok first weekend out this year, after a ton of charging problems on saturday finally got the car down the track. My numbers were horrible though.

60ft 2.114
1/8 9.576
1/8 MPH 71.57
1/4 15.141
1/4 MPH 87.79

Tried to move the timing around no real difference, the car is not wanting to launch real good right now it is wanting to push through the convertor on the line so i can only bring it up to 2K to launch.

The engine is a 310 with approx 11-1 comp, 416 heads, 228 @ .050 .472" lift cam, weiand 7546 single plane intake, hedman lt's, 650 holley dp, th400, 3.73 gears. I weighed the car it scales out at 2920 so with me in it 3100. with those numbers according to my virtual engine program it says it has 196 hp Any ideas on what's wrong. I know that i should be building a 350 or such, and that is on the stand just trying to get everything right first.

 

Those look like identical numbers that my truck puts out. My truck however is a 4600 pound 454SS so to get those kind of numbers, I'm also pushing a bit more HP.

With that kind of compression ratio, what fuel are you using? The cam and converter are also probably too small for that compression ratio. The carb looks a little small and the TH400 is eating a big chuck of HP. A TH350 would be better.

 

Running 110 sunoco, wish that i was running a th350, the th400 was a freebie though, so i had to take what i could get. I was thinking that i should have been close to mw66's numbers, i have more cam, and compression, but not by much, BTW 11-1 is what it should be a 0 deck i think that they were .010 in the hole. The car also seems like it doesn't want to pull above 5000 very good, i was thinking the hei module could be the problem, but, there is still a lot of things that i need to look at as well, going to check cranking compression this weekend and see whats up with those numbers as well, i may pull the carb and go through it as well. Convertor is rated at a 3500 stall.

What should i be looking at for cam size? I was thinking a 280 or 292 cc?

 

anyone have any suggestions? I am beginning to wonder about the carb, it was being used on a truck that a friend of mine bought and he didn't want the mech. secondaries, so i started using it.

 

Have you done much tuning with it at all? It will make all the difference in the world. You should be running faster than a 15.1 My Cutlass hit a 15.1 two weeks ago with the same heads on a 350 and a stock Suburban cam and horrible gears on last-leg Q-jet. I expect to hit well into 14s with a fresh Q-jet.

Your 3rdgen with way way way better gears and cam should be going much faster than that.

My vote is a tuning problem. Have you done any tuning with the distributer (recurve/vac advance kit) either?

 

Worked on the car this weekend, and found multiple problems with the distributor. The mechanical advance was sticking on it, and there was a problem with the vac. advance. I changed out the distributor with one that is working correctly and will see what that will help. Going to the track this weekend and i'll post my new times. Also was having alot of charging problems, could the low voltage caused many problems with the spark? At least enough to cause any hp drop?

 

Definitely yes! I have picked up a lot of power just by replacing a worn out HEI that was only giving me 29* total advance- but until I bought a decent dial back timing light I never knew how bad it was. And your charging system problems could be causing low voltage to the primary side of the coil, may not mean much at low RPM's but up high they hurt you.

Hope you get a chance to try it again.

 

Thanks i'll update my numbers after the weekend.