Been thinking about my ongoing pickup project... curious what it's going to run when I can get the final stuff together to get it to the drag strip.
I've got a '54 1/2T; completely original truck with an engine swap and (in progress) front disk brake swap. Probably weighs about 3800-4000#; nothing's been removed except for the inner fenders. Still has the stock 4.10 one-legger time bomb out back... for now. 235/75/15 plain ol' radial tires.
The engine is a '68 383, bored .030; 440 Source 4.25" stroker kit with 20cc dished pistons. OOTB Source heads. Engle street roller (299 deg on the seat, 262 @ .050; .394" lobe lift; ground on 108, installed on 105), 1.7 Harland Sharp rockers, and M1 tunnel ram w/ 770 CFM AVS carbs. Quench is .042"; CR should fall around 9.5:1. Headers are 1-5/8"-1-3/4" stepped, 34" long w/ 3" collectors (were made for a 383 inch 383); are small but here to stay. Exhaust has 3" cutouts, and then drops to 2.5" to hemi mufflers in the back.
The trans is a 727 that was put together with selected stock type parts and a non-LBA reverse manual VB. The convertor is something I traded an intake for; it had "4000" written on it... it's a small-bowl mopar that's had something done inside to loosen it up. I guess it'd be sold as a 3-4000 stall convertor.
The combo seems to drive pretty well on the street, apart from being noisy (both exhaust note and valvetrain). Still working on part-throttle tuning, but it seems to idle clean and have good throttle response.
So, here's the first question: without making any real changes other than tuning (and perhaps replacing the rear axle assy w/ something stronger), what do you guys expect from it?
And part 2: how much ET am I leaving on the table with cam, convertor and minor head porting?
The rocker arms I bought were advertised as being 1.6, with offset for MW size port. They're actually 1.7:1 (according to Harland Sharp, who inspected one) and offset .350". I plan on having the pushrod pinch welded on the outside to allow for some porting; am not really keen on throwing away the 2.19" valves for larger ones, since they only have a few hours of run time on 'em. But could do so if it were going to make a significant difference.
Plans are to change head gasket to get quench distance <.035, and mill the heads down to get compression up to 10.5+.
I'm not married to the cam that's in there now; it does what I wanted it to do (run okay and not require a ton of valvespring load), but would be willing to replace it. I'm not interested in cam lobes that require super-heavy springs that will shorten component life.
The convertor is probably going to get replaced someday if I chase timeslips... probably a gain to be had there.
Seeing how fast some of the F.A.S.T. cars go with manifolds and G70-14 polyglas tires, I'd like to be able make this hog run faster than people would expect a stupid old farm truck on 235 street radials to go.
Suggestions? Projections?
-Bill
