hey guys....im just wondering about this 80 camaro im most likely going to buy .its tranny and its top speed got me confused. the camaro has a stock 350 with a 3 speed manual tranny. i believe the gear ratio is 3.10. i was wondering what an approximate top speed would be around. im asking this question because the 3 speed tranny got me a little confused. and i also checked camaro information and it says the 350 has only around 160 horsepower..could that be true?

 

Yep, My friend had a 78 Formula with the same combo, except he had 3.73 put in. It was bone stock oterwise. His speedo went to 110 or 120 but it never bottomed out. And yes the late 70's and early 80's 350 were born during a gas crunch so they are very restricted in factory hp output.

 

Those cars tend to suck pretty bad if you ask me. They're big,heavy and underpowered which makes for one slow,slow car. My friend has one that actually moves pretty good but it has a 454 BBC in it and that makes all the difference.

 

Weight will have no bearing on top speed. What's more important is drag coefficient, frontal area, and the engine being able to make enough horsepower to overcome with wind resistance encountered as a result.

I'm going to make a lot of assumptions here, so I could be WAY off base.

assuming that the car has enough horsepower to overcome the wind resistance, and assuming a 1.0:1 third gear ratio, and assuming it's got a 28" tall tire in the back, and assuming that the redline is approx. 5400 rpm the car ought to be able to do 145 mph, but more realistically I'd guess about 125 mph.

You know what they same about making assumptions...

 

haha you make an *** out of you and me..That sounds about right to me though. Even though you'd need a couple of miles of open road in one of those cars to hit that speed.

 

OR:
A really big jet pack
200hp shot of Nitro
Or a modern F-Body and some tow rope

Sorry it's just that me and my buddy spent alot of time restoring his car and in the end it was still just slow, but nice looking.

 

sorry guys but this ones gotta be locked for lack of thirdgen street racing content let me remind you to register at www.nethirdgen.org for all non technical questions