Basically all my engine specs are at the bottem. So according to the forum with this set up, Vortec heads are not gonna work. So I put the current set up through performance trends engine analyzer(www.performancetrends.com ) which comes to about 340hp and 370 torque. I want to break 400 soon without breaking the bank. Also I want to keep my C.R. at or around what it is now. I guess better heads would be the answer just not sure which kind are the best for your buck. Also the machine shop said $400 for a porting job, would my stock irons get me to 400 if ported. And is that a reasonable price. Which brings me to self-porting, $40 for a kit but what kind of results and how hard for a kid who got an A for sanding in woodshop class . Just wondering what you guys think.
thanks

 

Despite what you would think by common opinions, there is a lot more to a cylinder head producing power than big ports and big airflow numbers. Where the sparkplug is placed and its' orientation, the shrouding around the valves, the quench area, how the valves are angled, the shape of the combustion chamber, the material (heat reflectivity), etc, etc, makes differences that will ad up to quite a bit.

The upshot of this is, no matter how your stock heads are ported, they will never have good chambers. Just making bigger ports that flow more air will help peak power, but if you don't really know what you are doing, it can cause minor to catastrophic problems in the power band. If your dyno program does not take combustion chamber efficiency into consideration, or cranking losses, it is only an approximate of your real HP output. You didn't list what you really intended the car for. If you're only racing dyno figures, just borrow someone elses dyno chart to show all your friends, and save a ton of money

Try GM Fastburn heads or AFR's instead of the Vortechs. Power costs money. You can go with nitrous, and have to repair blown up engines regularly. Or you can build a solid engine targeted for what you intend, and your budget, and let the peak power numbers fall where they will.

 

yea well basically its intended for a suitable daily driver with alot of umph. the program does consider the combustion chambers and crank drag and i know it is only an estimation. the reason i'm so conserned is because i'm 19 and my roomate and i have been building our own 355's for the past 6 months and its like a lil inside friendly grudge you probally wouldnt understand. basically i'm very interested in learning but i'm on a budget so once again any serious suggestions on how to get this engine to around 400hp so i can be done with this engine and drop it in. any positive suggestions in detail would help and be much appreciated.

thanks

 

Get some AFR's and a better intake. Pretty much any new intake will be better then that 40 year old technology crappy *** Torker.