I think you were confused because I wasn't really following what you and Andy were disagreeing about, I was just being contrarily facetiously sarcastic, friendlily joking. o No: As for the granny grocery getter, the 2bbl and lower than 280 HP sbb 350 versions were marketed for the little old ladies from Pasadena to get their groceries and just plain entry level cars. Not all cars from that era were "muscle" cars, some of them were just cars.(sorry if that burst your bubble, but it is what it was) Derek
I understand that stuff as I did everything I knew of or my friends did to tweak the 77 engines. No amount of tuning is going to bump the 140 rated hp engine and double its power(280 hp). The 77 has an actual compression of 7.7, the 72 is at 8.2 and the 70 sSP is at 9.4 with .020 head gaskets. Big differences to get 280 to 300 hp. And I feel the 7.7 compression motor is not going to make 280-315 hp with out boost or nos , your never going get that kind of power from tuning or a cam change. The power seem comes up after compression comes up closer to 9 . This is why these engine like boost so much.
What I'm saying is that you wouldn't be doubling it's power or seat of the pants feel, the numbers were not comparable to begin with. The torque curves might not be drastically different if on the same dyno, the same day, with the same corrections. HP would definitely fall short at the very top of the powerband, but it's just a blip where it hangs on a little bit longer.
Geeze guys, talk about missing the point! lol I'll try one last time: the power ratings for the engines prior to 1972 used brake/flywheel ratings, which were much higher than the SAEnet rated engines of 1972+. Then factor in the smaller cams used from 1976+ and you get your weaksauce engines--however, STILL rated at SAEnet. If you were to put them on a dyno and rate them like they did in the early days, you'd see that your 140 hp 2 barrel engine had 175-185 hp (this was with a tiny single exhaust and early-style restrictive catalytic converter). This is still weak, obviously, but the point way back that I tried to make was that the torque numbers weren't weak at all, even if the hp was, even on those low comp small cammed engines. Example: 280 ft. lbs. SAEnet still comes out to 350-373 ft. lbs. flywheel. I also know the compression is actually way less than the rated, but that wasn't what I was saying. I said that some people here seem to think you need to zero the deck to get the advertised compression ratio, which isn't true. I'm not out to see who's right or wrong, I just want the facts to be presented accurately, that's all. Derek said he agreed with Andy, then turns around and says he wasn't following what was being said! C'mon Derek! lol No one's disputing the later model engines were weak from the factory hp wise. They still had good grunt, and that's my whole point to all this back and forth. This whole thing has turned almost comical at all the confusion going on! :eek2: You DO NOT need boost to get 260 hp and 360 ft. lbs. out of those low comp engines, IF you use the earlier style GS camshafts. If you use the later tiny camshaft, you'd be lucky to see 230 hp (175 hp SAEnet rating / .8 or .75 for 20-25% loss = 219-233 hp and 270 ft. lbs. SAEnet rating / .8 or .75 for 20-25% loss = 338-360 ft. lbs. for the later model 4 barrel variant), but the torque wouldn't change much (another point I was trying to make earlier). So a 1976-1980 Buick 350-4 would have had 219-233 hp and 338-360 ft. lbs. FLYWHEEL rating. This is the weakest Buick 350 ever made (the 2 barrel showed even more torque @280 ft. lbs. SAEnet vs the 270 SAEnet for the 4 barrel in those years). Put in a Crower level 2 cam (go back and re-read what I said) and you'd see 360-370 ft. lbs. and 250-260 hp flywheel rating from a low comp engine. Is that so hard to believe? Grocery getter granny car? You bet! No bubbles to burst. Bump the compression to a reasonably moderate rating (9.5 or so isn't unrealistic), use the larger GS cam, clean up the heads, and you can expect to see 370-380 ft. lbs. and 280-290 hp out of the same engine. Put on headers and you'll see closer to 400 ft. lbs. and well over 300 hp. Using the largest GS replica cam (Melling sbc-5) with a 75* intake closing point (many performance cams don't even have this late of a closing point), bump static to 11:1 (yes) to get 8:1 dynamic (forged flat tops would work nicely here), port heads to get 230 CFM with large tube headers would produce 413 ft. lbs. @3250 and 346 hp @5250 flywheel. You'd need to run the engine fairly cool (180* or so) and make sure there were no hot spots (flat tops and polished combustion chambers) to run this on 93 octane on the street, and spruce it up with some race fuel when taking it to the strip. The forged pistons would be much more forgiving on any boo-boo's with detonation during the tune. Getting these numbers (power and RPM) from a stock OEM replica cam is impressive. Efforts are currently being made by yours truly to show that this is the case in the real world, not just 'on paper' or in a software dyno simulator. No more information will be disclosed by me until I feel the time is right for it.
I do understand how you look at it Gary but at flywheel if you had a 77 engine and a 71 engine. Both stock and measured same dyno equally. Your not going to get even close to them being the same power. I do believe that the ratings from the books are not comparable as you claim some are not flywheel net. If it wasn't so costly I would say lets get sere all engines to spec and dyno each on the same dyno to show what actual power each had. That would make them equal. You keep using some kinda of math to theorize that 280 = 370 torque. I can add 100 hp to a number on my engine , it won't actually make the car faster. Nor will it be true. http://www.automobile-catalog.com/make/buick/regal_1gen/regal_1gen_coupe/1977.html 19.1 1/4 mile times with 370 lbs?
This is between you and Andy. But if Andy says his '77 sbb 350 ran like a turd, then I have to believe him. I had a '77 Pontiac Grand Prix back in the day with a 400 4bbl and a TH400 with 2.73:1 rear gear that was rated for 150 HP and 300 ft lbs. I wouldn't call it a turd by the way it ran(close though), but I wouldn't call it a "muscle" car either. It didn't help that with the addition of the guard rail style bumpers of the '73 on up cars aiding in making them heavier didn't help with an engine that made less power! Not until '78 when the General's line up got a redesign is when they started getting lighter, but to offset performance even more pathetic smaller engines were used from then on. And virtually all the cool engines were gone starting in '76 with the death of the good CBOP big blocks and by '80 the end of most of the BOP small blocks. :ball: I would say the only good thing about the later sbb 350s is that the cranks were made from the same material as the older ones and easier to rebalance internally because the cap screw rods were so much heavier than the earlier rods. And they can still be made into a good running engine thanks to what little aftermarket parts available, which doesn't include "stock" style replacement pistons. And for the record I said that I thought "the 10.25:1 rated engine would be with the piston .020" in the hole(not zero decked) with a .020" factory gasket, giving a .040" quench ring, not that it matters." Not sure if that would be true, but it is how the General setup other engine families that used thin factory steel shim head gaskets. Derek
That's not even what it was about. It was originally about him not believing 360-370 tq and 250-260 hp was achievable without boost, and you went right along with it. Seems option number 2 was the case then in my earlier post? Are you guys even reading my posts? It's ok if you're not, I know they're a bit long-winded, but at least make sure you know what you're agreeing/disagreeing with. All I'm sayin is get your facts straight. (saying this politely and with good intentions, not trying to pick on anyone or start anything) I've already said the older ones ran way better than the newer ones, and explained why. As long as we can get the SAEnet and flywheel differences ironed out, then I guess progress has been made. :grin: Anyway, it was a good chat. Some don't like the 'banter' but there are always nuggets of info here and there that are useful.
Ok then, we'll choose door number 1 on this one. When they measured hp in the old days, they did so without any accessories or transmission, etc. installed. It was at the flywheel. This means there was nothing to remove any power from the engine. Later on, they started measuring power with all accessories installed and operating, at the rear of the transmission. This removed quite a bit of power from the flywheel, but was how they wanted to rate them seeing how no one would ever see the power figures without anything attached to the engine in a real-life scenario. These two engines (if identical) would make similar power if you measured them both either with or without the accessories and transmission, etc. There were other factors that played into why the engines were weaker later on (hp wise), one main reason was the much smaller camshaft. Torque is how much it can move; hp is how fast it can move it. You won't win races on torque alone. The reason 280 ft. lbs. with accessories/tranny attached is weaker than 360-370 ft. lbs. without them attached should be pretty obvious. It's just a rating method. Flywheel isn't realistic when the engine's in the car, but I use those raw figures to show what the engine itself is actually producing, so you can rule out any variances with different types of accessories and transmissions used. It shows you what the engine is capable of in its purest form, then you can figure things in later on or take it to a chassis dyno for a real-world measurement.
Here's another real world example that may help explain what's going on: The Buick Grand National (the GNX version) came factory rated at 276 hp and 360 ft. lbs., which doesn't sound all that impressive until you learn that they were about as fast (depending) as the 1970 455 Stage1 GS which has been discovered to have made about 378 hp (actual) and close to 500 ft. lbs. (not 510). (side note = the factory 1970 455 Stage1 has been shown to be capable of 400 hp flywheel on the dyno with tweaking--this is through manifolds, not headers) What's the mystery? There is no 'theory' here, it's simply how the engines were rated. When you see that the much weaker turbo v6 rating numbers were SAE figures and the 1970 455 Stage1 were flywheel figures, you'll understand. Other factors determined end-result performance, but the raw figures show 276 SAEnet hp = 345-368 flywheel hp, and 360 SAEnet ft. lbs. = 450-480 ft. lbs. Can anyone here show me where I'm wrong? I want to be corrected if I am.
In my '71 Buick chassis manual, IIRC, in the transmission section, they state "taxable horsepower" The T-350 was mid 30's h.p. The 400 was more, but I don't remember how much more. The engine power it took to operate the trans. is that what they are referring to as "Taxable horsepower"?
Yes sir. I spoke of this in one of my earlier posts. Transmission and accessories, not just transmission. TH350 was 36 hp removed, TH400 was 44 hp.
He is exactly right on this, this is almost word for word in the Chiltons manual I have This started in 71, all measured with accessories installed and operating and measured at the back of the transmission. The 350 trans took about 35 or so hp to operate and I think this was at full throttle and the 400 trans took about 45 hp to operate. The 350 trans was one of the ones that took the least amount of hp to operate. Compression in 71 was lowered also and by 75 it was down even more. All the emission crap that came in during this time just killed the hp. By 75 there was nothing out there that had guts, by 78 it was done, it was all choked off with all kinds of garbage. I used to race this guy that had a 77 Regal and all I had was the camshaft, 4bbl and headers, that's it, no gears or stall 256 gears. I would clean his clock in the 1/4 mile we had staked out on a backroad. So by 1977 those 350's were a dog. All the 70 engines showed to have 10 on the compression and by 71 they all showed that they had 8.5 according to the book but not necessarily true as pointed out during a teardown but if blueprinted it would come out to those numbers put in the book. Guess the factory had a large tolerance.
Here is where you're wrong, the listed book figures from all the years EVERYONE of them are SAE numbers. I will note though that the Society of Automotive Engineers did change the way they took the measurement of HP and torque starting in '72 IIRC. Basically the old numbers were gross and the new numbers are net, pretty much how you explained it, to bad you didn't get it right. :laugh: Derek
See Gary , your specs are off alittle again . The turbo v6 ran 245/375. Very similar to your rating of the 350. And faster then the 350 to boot. So ho does one become a 19 second car (77regal 140 hp) with your rated 370 lbs vs the 87 turbo v6 car(245/375) running 14s. Big difference for similar power ratings unless the rating is incorrect. Now if you look it up the v6 shared engine lines and most of all Pistons from 76-up. Both rated at 8.0 but we know much less actual. As this is where my theory of needing boost comes in. The v6 needed boost to produce those numbers with shared specs and Pistons from the 350. So the 350 needs boost to see similar numbers using same Pistons. Same sae measuring so that comparison has proved inaccurate. But the lower rated v6 is still faster then the equivalent 350 .
76-80 350 with the bigger 1.55 exhaust valve and the egr helping add to the power you can see that it was a slug in comparison .
I'm sure it varies. That's just info I got elsewhere from a reliable source, and have seen it duplicated elsewhere.
GNX was rated at the figures I gave. It had more power than the regular GN. "My" rated 370 lbs. was actually stated as 360-370, and it was with a Crower level 2 cam suggested. It was also said to be an educated guess. It was also flywheel lbs., which isn't the same as the SAEnet rating. Before any further discussion can take place, there must first be an understanding that engines measured at the flywheel with NO accessories and NO transmission attached will show more power than an engine rated WITH those things attached, because all those things REQUIRE power to operate. This is why you see figures that SEEM to indicate the same power, but are vastly different.
