The drive, and playing with the car set my mind at ease as far as the Belvedere goes for Drag Week 2013. The engine runs fine with the new heads, stays cool, and is good to go. I have a fresh tranny, a cooler and deep pan, a 3.54 Dana, a 3/8 fuel line, a 3/8 tank P/U, and global west subfame connectors...it's just a matter of getting all that installed. A daunting task, of course, but not something that I have to mull over and think about a great deal.

The Valiant however, keeps me awake at night, as I plot a course for its future, and I was thinking about that for a good part of the MATS weekend. I'm a Big Block guy... they are what I know, what I'm comfortable with, but the 62 Valiant has a very small engine bay, with a firewall that protrudes further into that bay than it's 63-66 brethren. Still, If I wanted it to be an all out, fast as I can go street/Ego machine, I'd do a low deck/EZ head BB for it that would easily runs 9's on the motor, and well into the 8's on spray... but I can't even decide on that! I mean, anything under 10.0 forces many changes that I feel really hamper streetability. If 10.0 is all I'm looking for a stroker smallblock should get the job done just fine, right? So I spent a good part of my weekend eyeballing some of the better running smallblock combos.