As a new first time owner of 350TPI (in a 88 Camaro IrocZ) I'm surprised to find it revving so high. With WOT it reaches just about 6500 rpm before going to second gear.

Should I be happy or scared?

Previos owner didn't know that much about the cars history...

 

The tach is probably broken, as usual for these cars. When they break they almost always read high; sometimes twice the real RPMs.

Take it to a tune-up shop or something, and check the car's interior appearance package against a piece of test equipment. I'll bet you'll find that it's really doing about 4000-4200 when the tach says 6500.

 

Some previous owner done some work on both the gearbox and the engine. As part of this they also repainted the tachometer face and moved the yellow rev intervall to 6300-6800 and the red to 6800-7500.

I will check the tach against a secondary unit, but just for the sake of argument: Is it possible? And if so, what's done to enginge?

 

in theroy just about anything is possiable, however it's unusuall for a factory TPI to rev to 5000 let alone past it.

 

Actually I don't even know if it's the original engine, haven't check the numbers yet, only had it for 3 days...

 

I dunno I had a stock 305 TPI up 5500 granted it wasent doing much except making noise at that point.

Look under the hood see if any of the (TPI components) have Accel or Holley written on them then you might be spinning it that high.