All you hardcore bracket car guys

I dont know if Im the only guy with this problem but it is driving me nuts. I cannot for the life of me decide what engine to build this year for my "Budget Cuts" bracket truck I have been building for the last 4 months. To give you a little history on it, it is a '27 ford Model A truck built with the influence of a '60s era fuel altered, but without the blown hemi and with much more modern safety equipment. It has a 110" wheelbase, 4.11:1 spooled 8", I will be building a 10/12 pt cage and its expected weight is 2200-2300 with fuel and me in it. To give you an idea of what it looks like it has a 24" long bed, an 8" chop and 3" sectioned out of the body. The fiberglass bucket seat sits right on the floor, paint is going to be a traditional hot rod satin black with the 2"by3" chassis being red as well as the cage. Now to get to my question, I want a motor that will last 5 years of bracket racing with 1 or 2 tear down/refresh in that span and be fairly consistant. The budget for the engine is $2000 and I have a 351w bare block, a pair of fresh ported D0OE 351 heads with 1.94"/1.60" valves 210-220ish cfm @ .500", rebuilt C-4 trans, and a 3500 converter. My rough idea is to get a Hawks Racing rotating assembly which includes a nodular iron 4" stroke crank, Hawks cnc I-beam rods and either hyper flat top KB pistons or forged dome KB pistons. The flattops will put me at 11.8:1 and the domes will put me at 14.1:1 comp. If I went with the flattops I would use race fuel and with the forged dome pistons I would run Methanol. I want to use a solid flat tappet cam with 240ish dur @ .050" and a vic jr intake. The assembly is supposed to be safe to 550ish HP but I think this combo would probably make 400ish hp/ 500 ft lbs tq at pretty low rpms. Does this sound like a good budget oriented combo? is there any problem with running 14:1 with that rotating assembly. Could I run a 100 shot of nitrous on a 14:1 motor? I have many questions to ask because this is my first race only motor. I know alot of you will frown at the ported 351w heads on a 408ci motor but they wont cost me anything and its not like I couldnt upgrade later. The truck is intended for 1/8th mile bracket racing and Im not really sure what to expect for times from this motor so I dont know how much safety equipment I will need, any guesses at that?
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the 351 you spec'd out sounds good to me, go with the flattops though. You might want to use a cam with a little more duration to bleed off some low end torque. I think your gonna have traction issues if you build for low rpm power.

How about posting some pics of that thing?
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Pictures are coming soon. I dont have a camera at the moment. I dont mind the low end torque and I prefer it for the fact that this motor would never see anything over 6000rpm and should last a long time. Do you think it would be safe to run 12:1 with KB hyper pistons with race fuel or methanol??
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Do some research on the Hawks stuff........it may actually be CAT.

In which case quality is hit & miss from what I hear.

Check with Brian at www.adperformance.com

Excellent products, pricing and customer support.

Good luck. [img]/phpBB/images/smiles/icon_tup.gif[/img]
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I ran a 9:1 302 on methanol with no problems, other than pissed off racers....thing ran dead on the dial every run. Once I got the hang of reaction times it was a proven winning combination. Yours looks like a pretty good combination to me.

Use the methanol on whatever you want...street car, whatever. Just make sure your fuel system is up to par (big lines, BIG pump, good alky-specific carb or injector (my choice is the injection).

What kind of rear suspension and tire combo are you going to have?

Solid mount rear axle no suspension in back but I got 6" travel of suspension up front to hopefully transfer the weight. I have some 28" by 10.5" slicks but I might find something around 31" to help the rear find traction without a good 4-link. Although with the rear tires moved sooo far forward and the front axle extended so far beyond the grill I bet it has 60% of its total weight sitting on the rear tires. With the complete 302/c4 I have in the truck right now, I can grab onto the front axle and lift the front of the truck a foot off the ground. If you dont believe me I will get my wife to snap a picture and post it on here in a few weeks. But then again maybe Im just a STUD![img]/phpBB/images/smiles/icon_wink.gif[/img][img]/phpBB/images/smiles/icon_spin.gif[/img]
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I built a similar combo for a customer several years ago, except it was a '48 Anglia, with a '57 Olds rear end, straight axle and no rear suspension. It weighed 2200 lbs. with the driver in it. It had a 350 $hevy with a set of unported 461 Camel Humps with 2.02 valves, cast crank, stock rods, forged flat top TRW's, a .600 lift Bullet flat tappet cam, a box stock Victor Jr. and an 850 Holley methanol carb. It had a 'Glide with a brake, and a 6200 rpm converter. It went 10.40's at 120 mph. carrying the front wheels for 60 or 70 feet. My point is, that you can build a very similar Ford engine for cheap and probably run as fast or faster because we are at 4500 ft. Build the 351 with the 3.50 stroke and be money ahead.
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sounds like you are building a 408 if you have a 400 crank, correct? i run a 408 in s/st. it has run a best of 10.13 at 2850 lbs, 9.92 at 2600 lbs. alky carbed. makes about 590 hp at flywheel. have about 400 runs on it, just about to replace bearings for the second time. has fully ported dart steel heads, 269 at .050 roller cam w/.690 lift, 1 7/8 headers. 5600 stall converter on a powerglide. only shift at 6200. could build and tune for more, but dont need it to run 10.90s. as always the key to hp is in the cam & heads. if you cant start with the good heads, okay. put as big a cam as you can get away with on your converter in the engine. its difficult to build an engine over time like you want and only buy a part once. even with the oem heads to start, i think you need a bigger cam than you have. i know you say you have a 3500 stall converter, but that changes as you change the engine and chassis. a bigger cam will lower the stall; a higher number rear gear will lower the stall. bigger aftermarket heads will lower the stall unless they help the bottom end, too.

i would think with the proper cam, intake, etc you should get at least 450 hp with the oem heads. just remember that each time you change or upgrade a piece of your setup, you will often need to retune and adjust to see any positive results. where do you race. are some of the old maine tracks still open. i've lost track since i moved out of new england.
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igo1090, yes I am considering the 408ci route since it will only cost me $170 more than 357. From what I have been hearing I might go with a custom comp cam based from the 306s. As far as the converter, its a TCI streetfighter that I had behind a 302 ranger it footbraked 2200. Im having TCI loosen it for me and they said they can loosen it enough to stall 3800 behind a 302, 165cc heads, 230ish duration @ .050" cam. It might stall more behind this 408. I dont expect the world out of this combo and Im sure I will spend the first part of the season tuning it but thats the fun part for me. Im not that much of a hardcore bracket racer, I get most of my kicks just going to the track and going fast.[img]/phpBB/images/smiles/icon_wink.gif[/img] As far as Maine tracks go, you got two options; Oxford plains 1/8th mile dragway or Winterport 1/8th mile dragway. When I feel ambitious I drive to NH and run down New England dragway 1/4 mile.
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by the way, these engines have TORQUE. if you put sticky tires on it, that 8" rear and axles arent going to be around for long. be careful. snapping an axle at the wrong time can be exciting. think about a 9" and some forged axles. the 8" axles are the same as the 9" 28 spline and i twisted mine with a mild 351 after a while.
i raced new england back in the early '70s. never made it up to the maine tracks. i think sanford was the popular one back then.

_________________
Dave Shea
S/ST 1818 S/P 1018 H/R 1564

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: igo1090 on 10/30/05 1:19am ]</font>