First off, I'm a dumb noob so be merciful.

I bought an Ebay car and the seller couldnt tell me anything about the motor other than it had a fresh rebuild.

What I do know about it is that its a 70 440 hp block, rough idle cam, 1 7/8 Hooker Comp, Eddy Performer 440, Eddy 750 Comp Series carb, is only happy running on 94 Octane, and no, it doesn't blow blue.

I had a reputable race guy put it on his chassis dyno and he said, "It makes good power. Who ever built it really new what they were doing. The air fuel is perfect." and hands me the sheet.

279 max hp
358 max torque

I said, "I was hoping for more." He said, "You dont really wanna be making much more than that cause stuff will start breaking, besides, thats about all these things make."

So I called my cousin who's been drag racing all his life and he says you lose about 100 hp through the drive train. If I want more I need new heads, most of the power is in head design.

I dont doubt what these guys are saying. I'm just scratching my head reading all the posts here where people are saying you can get 500hp out of a 440 by sneezing at it and I'm lucky if I'm making stock HP with better intake, headers and whats got to be a lumpier than stock cam.

If my compression was way low, wouldn't I be able to run lower octane gas? How bad can my heads be if thats the issue? Are people exaggerating their hp estimates here?