......... I've got one and it cranks some serious hp (I'm not prone to piles of BS like some). Mine dyno'd at 385 hp...........

Thanks Bob, I get a little tired of reading the HP figures that get thrown out by people who have never seen a dyno in their life.


I'm currently building a 351W for my 77 Mustang. This car is going to be a keeper, so I'm not scrimping on what I want. Currently the short block is built and includes a .040 over bore, resized rods, .010/.010 crank, new cam bearings, having the line bore on the mains checked, new balancer,and the rotating assembly balanced.

The top end of the engine is going to be made up of Edelbrock Preformer RPM heads (1.90/1.60), cam (.448/.472 270-280 (equivilant to an edelbrock Preformer Plus)) and Edelbrock Preformer intake with a carter 650 AVS. This combination is based on my particular experience with SB Ford and what I see from Edelbrocks and "independent" car magazines dyno testing.

I based my decisions on a total car package concept, how the car is going to be primarly used (mostly highway driving) rear end (3.00 posi), transmission (srod 4 spd), and RPM range the engine will realistically see (cruising 2600-2800 RPM and keeping the redline realistic at about 58-5900 RPM for when I want to play).

My "low to moderate budget" is $3000. The only thing keeping me from completing the car at this point are the heads (I'm waiting on some cars to sell and that ...family, X-Mas coming, responsibility thing is going on). Now I could have scrimped and just done a valve job on the stock heads (saving about $1200) and had an engine that never would have lived up to it's potential, found some earlier castings with the bigger valves and then sunk a ton of money into them for magnifluxing, new valves, guides, hardened seats, springs and maybe a little porting (talk about false economy) or wait until I can do it right and the way I want.

Keep in mind when you "just drive around with "that" grin on my face" you have to live with the engine you build, and if costs a little more now, you won't be sitting there saying "I wish I had... "