Re: Clearing up a matter-

Posted by Hal (WA) on February 17, 2008 at 18:42:41 from (66.45.175.118):

In Reply to: Clearing up a matter- posted by ENGINE MAN AND WELDOR MAN on February 17, 2008 at 10:00:38:

I have read your other posts and wondered just how old you were. Now I see that you are 15, and probably a high school Freshman or Sophomore. That helps me make suggestions.

First of all, you need to decide if you are planning to drive the car in question back and for to high school, or if it is going to be a dedicated race car. A race car that is going to be competitive needs to be built for that particular class and must follow ALL the rules for that class, or else you fail tech inspection. Most race cars I have been around were miserable to drive on the street--no idle, impossible gas mileage and needing to be tinkered with every run. They also cost BIG MONEY, over and over, to keep them running and competitive.

If you have lots and lots of money, I am sure there are people who will sell you things to make your Nova powerful and fast. But if your resources are more moderate, like say you are working a part-time job at minimum wage, I would suggest that you set your sights a bit lower. It would be very possible to build a nice sounding, fairly quick Nova with what you are starting with, but you need to choose your parts carefully. Then you might end up with a car that will start every time you want it to, and also will not be so squirrely that you dare drive it in the rain.

If your Nova originally had a V8, you are halfway there. 400's are getting hard to find, and have some cooling issues. If the 400 is not in excellent condition, you might be better off trading it for a 350, since 350's are very common and CHEAP to rebuild. They also breathe pretty well with stock heads and manifolding. There are literally TONS of speed equipment out there for the small block Chevy. Watch for swap meets to hopefully make good deals on used goodies.

If I was building a small block Chevy to drive to high school and maybe once in awhile try the high school drags, I would build a 350 with flat top pistons and heads that would give me about 9.0 to 9.5 to 1 compression ratio. I would talk to the cam company tech people to see what they recommended for a mild to medium hot street cam for my application, and then buy the cam and kit that seemed to be the best, both for the money and for the job. This probably would not be the hottest cam offered. I would use headers rather than cast iron manifolds, and probably not fenderwall headers. I would use a recurved HEI for ignition.

As far as intakes go, for the street, dual plane manifolds are the way to go. Tunnel rams look cool, but everyone I know who ever tried to run one on the street ended up taking them back off. They might work OK at very high RPM's, but have lousy off-idle response and low speed performance. I have seen guys run single plane manifolds on the street, but in general they got poor gas mileage and not as good street performance as the car had before that change.

You also probably need to do some thinking about the drivetrain. I think you will be disappointed in the performance of your Nova with a Turbo350 and 3.08 rear gears. A partial fix would be to get a higher stall speed converter for the T350, but that usually will make your gas mileage go way down and produce lots more heat from the transmission. You could go to a higher number gear ratio in the rear end, but that really takes lots of gas, since you are constantly running the engine at high RPM at freeway speeds.

A kind of neat fix is to use a later overdrive automatic turbo hydro 700R4 rather than the TH350. The TH700R4 has a much lower first gear, which has the same effect on your takeoff as having the low gears in the rear end. But it is much easier on the mileage, especially with the overdrive. You have to have the throttle cable and have it adjusted correctly with the TH700R4, but otherwise it is a pretty good transmission. I think it also would require a shorter driveshaft, since the TH700R4 is longer than the TH350.

Years ago, when my buddy and I were just out of high school a few years, he bought a really nice 70 Cuda with a factory 440 and 4 speed. It ran really well stock, with quarter mile times down to about 14.0 and 100mph. But he thought it should go faster, so he started making modifications. Before he was done, he had 4.10 rear gears and a very modified, super high compression engine with a very wild cam. It was scary to ride in, because the power brakes didn't work very well and it was so loud, my buddy got several tickets for loud pipes. It also got 3 mpg and heated up if it got into a slow traffic situation. He quit driving it and a couple of years later he sold the Cuda for about half of what he had spent on hotting it up and a whole lot less than if he had left it alone. Live and Learn!

Good luck with your project. But plan to spend money and lots of it, if you decide to do a lot of modifications.

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