[b][/b]Soooooo, I know this is a BROAD question and answer but a friend of mine, John and I were talking today about converters and the subject came up, what is a good size and stall/flash for a SM?? Now, I know I’m going to get LOTS of people saying, “ there’s too many variables!!!!!” and I know that, so tell us your setup and the size/stall/flash of your converter.

I have a stock stroke 360 .040 and my converter is a 8” 4,200. I was thinking of going up to 5,000 but not sure.

My son ran a 5600 stall in his stock stroke 360 and ran 6.54 at 3200 pounds.

Where is your peak torque and shift point?

For drag racing or street and strip I would call Paup Forte at Turbo Action and get him to make one for your application

We have 8" 5000 stall ATI in our small block cars. Used them with stock stroke 360s that run 11.50-12.00s and also used the same convertor behind a 408 that went 10.70s. Most of our engines we shift around 6,000 and don't turn over 6,500.

I have gotten two PTC’s through John Cope. One for a 727 and one 904. Very happy with them both. Filled out the spec sheet and even with my “unusual” combo the flash is spot on what I asked for. I did send a sheet directly to PTC, and got a three word email response, that to be brutally honest, was enough to tell me that whoever looked at my sheet had no idea what I was doing with the car. Even though I wrote an essay on the sheet and I know they have built converters for the class. Though to be fair, what I need is pretty unusual, so they are definitely NOT the only ones to not understand. Never received a response from two others I sent sheets into. They were both 9.5”, the 727 flashed to 3340, the 904 flashes to 3500 according to the data.

I'm going to test my memory here. I pieced togther a 360 many years ago for a friend of mine. The basics of it were:
4.04" KB 190 pistons, the compression was around 11.5:1
Ported cast iron J heads with Manley 2.02"/1.60" valves
Port matched Edelbrock RPM Air Gap intake
Mighty Demon 825 carb
HVH 2" Super Sucker spacer
Solid F/T camshaft 252/258 @ 0.050", 1.6:1 Crane rockers, Valve lift was around 0.585", 108 lobe separation
1 3/4" x 32" 4 into 1s with a 3" collector
It made 495hp @ 6300, 471 ft/lbs @ 4800
We ran an 8" convertor that flashed to around 4800-5K from memory. It ran low 11's at 119 mph, trans was a A904 with a factory gear set

I've got a 360 of my own sitting at home that's similar, we built it up using parts we had lying around:
4.03" KB191 pistons, the compression is up around 13:1 (to be honest, I've not calculated it)
Ported cast iron truck heads, 2.02"/1.60" chevy Ferrera valves
Heavily modified M1 Intake
HP Holley 950 that I borrowed for the dyno test
2" open spacer with a 5 degree shear plate
Howards F/T camshaft, Crane 1.6:1 rockers, 268/276 @ 0.050", 106 lobe separation, Valve lift was around 0.686"
1 3/4" headers we had lying around, they were out of a Challenger, no idea who made them.
That engine made 520 hp @ 6800, peak torque was around 490 ft/lbs @ 5200 or 5300
If I wasn't making some changes to that engine, I'd throw a 8" convertor that flashes to around 5300-5500

If I was racing with a 2 speed glide, I'd have the flash speed higher again

I hope that gives you some insight Mike

Cheers