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.