Anyone ever read this article about making power with absolute junk.

Jo Jackson – 11 Second Chevrolet Nova – Drag Car – Hot Rod Magazine

haha, wow. Solid flat tappet 323/329 advertised, .493/.512", angle milled 993 heads, cast pistons, stock rods, 450HP, 480tq, 11.3s. Geez, that's pretty amazing. Kinda an oddball combo, that's for sure, not street friendly in the least.

For every one guy that gets his car to go fast with a bunch of crap like that, there's 1000 that are stuck in the 15s.

Also note how much money he REALLY has tied up in it: his cores (the cheap part) might be junk, but he's spent a WHOLE WAD (maybe even 2 wads) of money at the machine shop.

And think about it this way: how fast do you suppose he might be going, if he'd started out with something GOOD? The dude obviously has some patience and follow-through, and a REALLY LIGHT car, and a few years to spend tweaking on it, and more luck in just that one project than I've ever had in my whole life put together. That thing would probably be in the 9s with a pair of Iron Eagles or something. For probably about the same money.

As I've often said, just because a thing CAN BE done, doesn't necessarily mean it's a good idea. And just because one guy DID IT ANYWAY, doesn't necessarily mean it's a good idea for YOU (whoever you are!!) to try it.

And last but not least, note that A WHOLE BUNCH of his parts aren't "junk" at all; they're just stuff that he could get cheap. Certainly not a combo that you could duplicate at will, for anywhere near the same price; like, call up Jeg's and just order it all. I don't think so.

I just have to disagree with you on this point. I have gone to Englishtown on many occasions and these deals are pretty regular. I swear when you go people are willing to give you all kinds of crap. My buddy rents one of the vendor sections and at the end of Sunday night people leave literally piles of car parts as well as whole cars laying there and take off. Then everyone like vultures attacks all the crap laying around. One thing about Jersey is we have lots of crap laying around as you can tell from the article.

"That thing would probably be in the 9s with a pair of Iron Eagles"

Well not quite.....
Just flowed a new set of Iron Eagle 180 Dart heads.
They flow 208@28". In the article, his heads are ported to 225 cfm @28".

The Darts need just as much work.


the cam he used (with 1.6 rockers) is the oldy but goody "140" First design Z28 off road racing cam. 257-269 .493-.512-112

With a stated .020" net piston to head clearance @TDC the compression ratio is much higher than 10.3:1
more like 11.20:1
Could have saved a whole lot of machine shop labour (angle milling heads and intake for compression) by starting with common cheapy 305 head castings instead. Once fully ported with larger valves they are just as good or better.

I've built just such a "junk yard dog" motor.
My combo had more compression (12.65:1) and a tighter LSA cam
It made very near that power.