Can someone please explain the concept of a compression ratio. Like in the late 60's didnt they run a 13:1 c/p and like now cars run a 9:1. Does the compression ratio reflect apon horsepower. If so how would a person go about increasing a compression ratio? Thanks for your time.

 

compression ratio will help build power by making more cyl pressure

the more pressure that is in the cyl at the time the piston is heading down on the power stroke the stronger and faster it will push down the piston


now ways you can get more compression?
using a thin head gasket
using heads with a smaller combustion chamber
dome pistons.
you can also mill the head

only thing is with more compression it will make you need to either run with better gas, or reduce timing.

 

reduce timing of what? like camshaft or ignition? and thanks for the info, that helped me out a lot.

 

that would be ignition timing

but that is only if you want to use cheap gas

best thing to do is just go buy the lowest grade gas you can without running into ping