Can you guys bring me up to speed on the latest horse power gains? I built a 440 in the early 90s for my street challenger that ran 12.50s. The bottom end is stock with 10to1 pistons .030 0ver. Right now I'm thinking aluminum heads already ported with an intake match. And may roller rockers and cam. Any input ,expierence is welcome. how are people running pump gas with all the horsepower? Like I said I've been out of touch for awhile and wanna keep up.
Rhanks

Id save alot of money and just toss a 150 plate kit on it.

12.5 is very respectable at 10:1 a 150 plate kit is what 200lbs more tq?

Just a thought.

I would probably throw some of the bigger trickflows on there, hopefully you have the ability to get tight quench like .040 or less, probably going to do the same as a 100 HP shot o nitrous by adding a bunch of power and losing a bunch of weight where the nitrous actually adds weight and you got to bother with filling it all the time like I would, lots easier to just go get more gasoline.

Sorry I misunderstood, plate nitrous is oldschool, trickflow al heads, not so much.

12.5 is good but with some of these newer car making big horse power I wanna keep up lol. Kinda cluless with nitrous what do gotta do to the motor anything?

First things to do......

-decide on how much power you want to make

-determine what your budget is

-hopefully, your budget will cover the cost of the upgrades you’d need to achieve the target power level.

Once you have a budget and a target....... then it’s time to decide which is the best way to get “there”.

Or, spend a sh!tload more $ than neccessary only to eventually end up around the same performance level with a lot less money left.

Yes, this is definitely the voice of experience chiming in here.

I went from a really basic mp 484 cammed 440 similar to yours in 1989 but with only 8.8:1 compression (old oem pistons, milled heads) which ran a best of 12.53 at 106 or so, then in the early 2000s I then built myself my current 451ci low deck (has a stock 440 crankshaft turned down, this was on a budget) with rpm heads and a prh/comp streetable solid roller camshaft, and ended up with 11 flat at 123mph. Pump gas won't be a problem well far past the level I am at which admittedly ain't much. Once upon a time a 10 second street car used to be fast, now it's really no big deal.

Really just more choices available in cylinder heads + there finally seems to be more people willing to run roller camshafts + roller valvetrain. There were countless posts in the early 2000s here that people were afraid of needle bearings flying through their engine due to lifter failure. That's all pretty much gone.

Cheap stroker kits and stroker components has changed things quite a bit , there are more 500+ci combinations out there than ever.

You're on the right track. Trick Flow sells fully ported heads for $1000 each at Summit. Add a Trick Flow intake and you'll have the latest parts. If you want to really dial it in then add a Holley Sniper throttle body. With 10:1 compression you should have a nice solid 500 hp engine and with the EFI setup it should be very well behaved.

https://www.hotrod.com/articles/super-sniper-efi-sees-powerful-improvements-data-logging/

Sounds like the expierence I've been looking for! I was thinking trick flow heads and if I can find 2 1/8 headers that actually fit a b body is what I'm thinking now if I can't shave off a half a second in the quarter mile by doing that is it isn't worth it. As far as rollers are concerned like one poster stated I ran rollers in the 80s with my GTX and it run 10 .50s back then I was an all-star lol but did have needle bearings fail.
Thanks for all the input there's no better information than lessons learned from mistakes and achievements by people that actually had trial and error results instead of someone reading from from a summit book word for word what I'm looking at LOL

You don't need 2 1/8 headers for what you're doing. 1 7/8 will be just fine.

Bigger tubes means better heads

You don't need 2 1/8 headers for a street performance 440. My race 514 makes 900 hp with 2 inch headers so why would you think you need 2 1/8 inch headers on a 500 hp street car?

Well that's pretty impressive horsepower flowing through 2 inch headers how did you manage to get it to flow so good? I would think if you could get more going out you could move more through the heads?

Like I said in my original post, I'm looking for a little education because I've been away from racing for so long. Way back when that was the mindset.

The typical result of using headers with too large primary tubes is lost torque across the RPM range.

My rule of thumb for 440 street/strip engines:
- 1.75 400-450 HP
- 1.88 450-550 HP
- 2.00 550-650 HP
...

I used 1.75 to run 12.2s, 1.88 to break into the 10.9s, and 2.00 to run 10.5s.

Still have the 2" headers with the new 440 combination that makes 670+ HP.

Well I would like to get closer to 600hp can i get there with a stock bottom end 10 to 1 bored. 030 over ? If so How? I'm thinking that's too much for the old six pack rods.what can i squeeze out of that?
Your thoughts are appreciated!

What kinda of quarter mile ET are you getting with that setup?

Smaller primaries tend to run cleaner at idle and have somewhat better off-idle response, especially with big overlap.
As Blair explains in painful detail, when the exhaust valve cracks open BBDC the pressure may exceed 70 psi, and the initial escape velocity up to 6 times the average (based on volume and cross-section). Unless the alignment, shape etc. are bad, the pressure diff is what makes flow, not so much the size of the hole.

seems to me the biggest thing is the resonance, with too big a pipe it loses the signal till well past the operating range. Flow doesn't seem to make a big difference as I have seen a few tests where on a 300 hp small block makes no difference if you run the tiniest 273 manifolds VS ported and extrude honed 340 manifolds that will flow way more but without the tuning of the sound waves bouncing back and forth you get almost no difference, even shorty headers make very little extra power but step up to a quality long tube and power is way better but when you step up to too big of a race type header you again lose TQ until way past the RPM range.

Ya things have come long way. How nice it would be to have a dyno and play with different combinations. Thanks for clearing that up for me.

Not much info to go on...

The last stock bottom-end 9.5:1 440 I ran was making maybe 425-450-ish HP (low 12s) and ran great... right before it popped a rod bolt and turned just about everything below the heads into scrap metal.

Are your .030" OS pistons OEM-type cast or heavy TRW-type forgings? Neither are gonna be happy turning a lot of RPM, IMO.

Do the Six Pack rods have good bolts in them? In my case, it wasn't the LY rod that was the weak link, it was the standard rod bolts not holding up. But those heavy Six Pack rods aren't ideal, either.

If the bottom end is at least solid w/ decent parts, I'd think you could build something in the 525-550 HP range that wouldn't require RPM much past say 6200-6300. For comparison, my 600-ish HP combo that pushed my junk to mid-10s was turning 6800+ at the 1/4 stripe, but I have aftermarket rods and light forged pistons to handle the stress better.

Well, I suppose that's a start...

Not lightweight pistons, new rod bolts though planning on staying around 5800 rpm .I had a GTX WITH six pack rods lightweight pistons and really go port job on 906 heads that ran 10.50s at 5800 rpm 6200 at the end of the quarter

Back in the day we ran a rebuilt stock 440-6 motor (9.8:1>single 850 carb) for 2 yrs at the track, ran a single line milodon system, first running low 11's@450hp stock, but with a big SFT cam and turning 6350 rpm@the line, then on went ported BV 906's and 10's@526hp and 6600@the line. Finally, and ONCE only we went 9.96@7300rpm@the line ...it all held up ok but I certainly didn't like the song that motor sang at those rpms. Nothing wrong with a 6pk bottom end if you have it, we had 2000gms of weight per hole turning around on that crank.

600hp out of a stock stroke 440 by 5800rpm is going be a challenge........ without building a 625hp+ high rpm type motor.

I've got a 60 over 440 with the heavy trw pistons 9.5cr good rod bolts with maybe 400 runs on the short block. It was scattered in pieces in a friends shop for years and we cleaned it up put a fresh hone on the cylinders and a new set of rods and mains just because I had them. A set of cam bearings and a 557 mopar cam that I had on the shelf. The heads are 452s with the most.efort I'll give the old junk with new Manly 2.14 and 1.81s and a new set of Comp shafts for the old set of mopar rockers. It got Comp springs and hardware and Smith's pushrods.
The old heap made 520hp and 545tq on a stingy dyno.
This was a motor that a friend of mine put together in 88 fo my Volare, a street strip motor to run on pump gas, my buddy of over thirty years was I the VA hospital in Iowa City when I found the heads for the thing and got into putting it back together. From then on every phone call or visit was about this old 440. John died on 3/9/14 before I was able to get the heads done. So on 3/915 we made about ten pulls on the dyno sorting out what this thing liked and didn't.
Sorry for the rambling,but 520 hp 545 tq

Naaa! I love this [censored]! All of sudden in my 50s I'm like a teenager again! Love to to hear the stories

Nice!

A 440? What did the car weigh? Converter? Cam? Compression?

However, you helped me get close (580-ish) to the 600 mark at just around 6000rpm with the head work and cam selection (thank you!).

Here is an old school 440 engine, built by an old fart in 1997, that made 404 HP and 483 TQ. Stock forged crank, stock rods with good bolts and 6-pack style pistons. His son and grandson dinked with heads and cams until it made 650 HP on 91 octane.

Pop's 440

LOL I used to get that alot !the converter only flashed up to like 3,500 car weight about 3800 but the guy that did our heads and are motor was a genius to
.have you ever heard of Carlin Hines out of Youngstown Ohio I don't think there was anybody better back in the day. When Ford or Chevy set a record they would send him a car and say beat that record some of his cars were honking Hemi and I know Buckeye brute took his engine there. He had I think 3 aluminum front end cars I'm pretty sure honking hemi is still racing today if you ever raced in the 80s and 90s you knew who he was in Ohio and he would not give out information about is engine work and I can send you a video clip if you don't believe it our car was called Mopar Muscle and we raced at National Trails Dragway 42 Norwalk regularly and we had that name on our car way before the magazine came out that way before that magazine came out as a matter of fact I think it was Mopar performance coverage of the 88 Mopar Nationals has a centerfold in our pictures Square in the middle of the centerfold it may even have the time and shoe polish on the windshield

Pictures won't load

There we go

Any of you guys from Ohio remember this car?
from mid 80s to the 90s

Check out my posts on page 4

What stroker kits are people going with nowadays

Old school isn’t stoked engines. Old school is stock rods, stock crank, .040 cut off 440 decks, cut 906 heads, monster cams to make up for lack of head flow, all packaged in a super stock pinion snubber chassis

I would just start with a nice set of trick flow 240 heads with what you already have. You’ll get about a 1 point bump in compression and a ton more air flow. Not sure what your current camshaft is but I would bet that it will work just fine.

Dig that. Nice B body.

Pops 440 is a good read.

Old(ish) school......
Circa 1991

446 with custom flat tops that stuck out of the bore .040, .990 pins.
Ly rods, lightened and beams polished, shot peened, bushed to .990, resized with arp bolts.
Stock crank 10/10, deburred, balanced.
Ported 346 heads with 2.14/1.81 valves, milled for 11:1cr.
UD 276/280-108 flat tappet cam, .613/.624
Crane ductile rockers, 1.5 ratio
Milodon dual line oil system
Holley SD manifold modified to fit a 4500 carb
1150 carb
2-1/8 x 4 headers

Dynoed at just under 600hp....... went 9.80’s-9.90’s at 3000lbs with a glide/4.88’s and 15x33’s

#1 qualifier in S/G at a divisional race at LVD one year....... running it flat out(no throttle stop)...... 9.900