How much horsepower can the 302 block take?

It's weird then that my engine builder says I shouldn't rev past 5,000-5,500 even though my engine is pretty built up.

 

My experience w/ racing a stock block
http://mmb.maverick.to/showthread.php?t=19394

Have since moved on to a Dart block.

 

how much power were you making before you shot it with a 250hp nos kit?

 

all you guys with these stroked windsors, what are you guys running in the 1/4? with 600hp+ you guys got to all have cages and running in the 9's, correct?

Duane

 

500 hp. before the 250 shot.

 

9.801 @133 with 1.4 60' with the old motor, next month it's time to find out what the refreshened motor will do..................only 640/650hp ATC.
Car was 3325 with fuel and me............trying to loose 200lbs.

 

IMO, that's a pretty conservative engine builder if I'm remembering your cam choice correctly. Especially considering the fact that many of us have just done basic header swaps on older bone stock muscle.. and then driven the piss out of em' like they were race cars. Hell.. back in the day all you needed to do was install an aftermarket exhaust.. recurve the distributor.. add a bit more fuel(or even swap to a better carb).. and add big meats. No cam was required until you wanted to get serious.

It really depends on the cam.. and ultimately the intake manifolds flow potential(you have an as-cast dual plane, right?).. to really determine where your peak power is going to come in. BUT.. that has nothing to do with over-revving a bit for reducing shift related rpm drop. Similar to going through the lights a little past peak which usually makes for a faster run.. rather than shifting and pulling the motor down across the line.

I think your car is faster than you think. Actually.. I KNOW your car is faster than you think based on some of the conservative remarks and engine builder related rec's. You have the basic building blocks for a pretty stout street motor there.. and I would definitely be tuning it to all work together to make sure you're getting what you payed for. I can barely imagine that you would not be capable of 6,200rpm shifts with that car.

A plain jane example for ya.

69 Cougar
bone stock 351w 2bbl with stock single exhaust and 3.50 posi
car ran a paltry 16.50'ish quarter and felt really soft above 5k
BUT.. it still did 120+mph and stayed there for miles and miles without missing a beat. Wasn't enough for me after the shiny new(to me) wore off in 2 weeks though. lol

So I added:
ported 2v heads
ported factory 4v cast-iron intake
ported factory exhaust manifolds
used 69 Mach 1 4bbl cam run at 2 degrees retarded
used holley 1850 series 650 vacuum secondary with choke horn removed/stubstack
free flowing 3 inch drop base air cleaner
custom curved factory dual point disty with aftermarket coil and wires

car then went low 15's all day long after all that and felt much faster than it actually was. I later put small 1.5 inch primary/2.5 collector headers on it.. upped the exhaust from 2.25 to 2.5.. recurved the disty once more.. and was blown away at how it gained even more on the top end without giving up one little bit down low. Never took it to the track after that.. but the stopwatch said high 14's with some old 50 series Mickeys on the back for traction. With that taller tire.. I could CRUISE at 110.. and push it well past the speedo's 120 limit with ease.

Moral of the story.. look at other combo's and see what people are pulling out of it. Then look at yours to see where there is potential power to be gained. Unless you have someone who you're willing to let take your car and beat the snot out of it without fear of legal repercussion and/or breaking stuff?.. I would seriously look at having that car dyno tuned to save wear and tear.. not to mention the tickets from doing it out on the backroads.

Cars with the right parts can often find 30 horsepower over base tunes.. and even improve torque/mileage/drivability down low which makes dyno tunes an excellent bang for the buck in the end.

There are also decent and affordable programmable ignitions on the market now too. I have an MSD 7 series on my s10.. and a nice shiny new programmable 6al waiting to go in my Comet. They make it so you can have vacum advance type curves/light throttle performance at cruising(you need a map sensor though).. and then pull timing when you want to rev the snot out of it. Loads of various rev limiters and other features too.

 

thats pretty good. do you know what your car ran with the boss 302 in iT? it probably was close to that.

Duane

 

When the original owner had it his best time was a 10.15 and not sure about the mph...............but with the Liberty Top Loader he would leave the line at around 7500rpm. It had the same 4.56's as it does now........but he was about 100lbs lighter than myself and there was a 100lbs of lead in the back frame (hidden in the crossmember that connects the to side rails in the very rear of the car) because the weight distribution was supposed to be 50/50 for the B/SM class. He actually had two motors and two trans that they carried to all the major races like the Winternationals in Pomona. I would have liked to see him with the motor/trans in the back of the station wagon they used to pull the car..............plus tools. Those were the days!

 

I used to spin to 6,500 and I was told to stop because it apparently wasn't safe. I would launch at 5K pretty regularly.
I definitely will post again on this thread once to supercharger is on just to see how far I can push the block.

 

my setup now showed this on the dyno, that's another reason I was told not even bother going past my torque peak, but on the track the car still pulls hard right a little after 6K

 

this was my old motor, very stock 302 with stock heads



hard to read but max torque was 262 and max HP was 193