Maybe this is the place to ask the following question: Which 350 are you talking about? I know we went over the change in the way GM reported H.P. but there must be some other factors like a change in the SBC heads and compression ratios that changed with the gas. I offered this as a project to FMX and maybe he turned in his report by now but here is some data from a 1972 Chiltons manual, all for 4-barrel 350 engine.

Year Adv. HP Adv. TQ Adv. C.R.
1967 295@4800 380@3200 10.25:1
1968 295@4800 380@3200 10.25:1
1969 255@4800 365@3200 9.00:1
300@5000 380@3200 10.25:1
1970 300@4800 380@3200 10.25:1
360@6000 380@4000 11.00:1 (Z28)
1971 270@4800 360@3200 8.50:1
330@5600 360@4000 8.50:1 (Z28)
1972 210@4800 n.a. 8.50:1
275@5600 n.a. 9.00:1 (Z28)
1973 190@4400 270@2800 8.50:1 (Corvette)
250@5200 285@4000 9.00:1 (Corvette)
1974 195@4400 275@2800 8.50:1 (Corvette)
250@5200 285@4000 9.00:1 (Corvette)
1975*6 165@3800 255@2400 8.50:1 (Corvette)
205@4800 255@3600 9.00:1 (Corvette)

It looks like the usual hot rod principles are at work, higher C.R. makes more H.P. and a "hotter" cam as in the Z28 shifts the H.P. to higher rpm, but my oh my the same displacement can give very different results depending on other things. Somewhere in there tetraethylead was banned making high compression difficult and obviously in 1975 and 1976 the cams as well as the heads were changed but it looks like it is easy to detune the 350 as well as soup it up! IT would be interesting to see what differences there are on the dyno curves from 1000-3000 rpm and they might not be much different because the high H.P. comes from higher rpm. Can you experts comment on how the 350 got detuned to a measley 165 H.P. in 1975?

Don Shillady
Retired Scientist/teen rodder