I recently rebuilt my 59 364 with 30 over cast pistons and a stock 59 401 stick. The 250hp is a little anemic though. Its running a stock 4 barrel intake and 401 carb. Since I already have it finished I figure now is the time to upgrade it. I'm thinking about 325-350 hp. Would mild porting and lumpy cam get me close? It has 9.75 static compression.
Airflow does determine the power peaks. As far as it's feel on the street, the torque level doesn't go up tremendously. It will act more hyper from the torque band on up.
Jay,,,, recurve the distributer,,,, do my Doc dual plane mod.... rig up a cold air intake pkg.. put a little bigger carb on it... and while you are doing that stuff, port match the intake/heads and the exhaust manifold/heads.... put bigger exhaust pipes and lower restriction mufflers.... those mods will not be real expensive, can be done gradually, and yield excellent results... :Brow::Brow: If you cam it , you will lose some bottom end.... as big and heavy as the car is... you need all the low end torq that you can get.... best cam profile you could get would be the old supercat cam from buick in 1966.... you cant get that cam but you could have a custom one ground to those specs....
I'm not familiar with your dual plane idea. I don't have a car for the motor, but I might buy a 55 Chevy and slam that baby it. Lol 1 inch carb spacers increase power in these motors right?
you take the 4bb intake cut the front hole to back hole dividers out where the carb sets and smooth it up resulting in a dual plane intake.
1 hp per cube @ 5000-5200 with modded intake and valve bowl work isn't unreasonable for the displacement/head flow ratio. Bear in mind the difference in net and gross hp ratings related to how it feels to the butt dyno.
Are you sure about the 9.75:1 compression? Replacement pistons and a thicker composition head gasket will lower compression well below 9.75. Not sure about the '59 364 cam, but the '59 401 cam is similar to the one Doc mentioned. 109 degree lobe spacing produce a slightly rough idle. Later cams have a 114 lobe spacing. I think your heads are the same as the 401. Did they use the same rockers too? I think there was a ratio change between the old iron rockers and later alum rockers. Tom would know for sure.
The rockers are steel on mine. They switched to aluminum in 59-60. I know they changed the 364 heads with larger valves in 59, but I'm not sure the heads are the same as the 401. I think the compression came from the 30 over bore, head surfacing, and the head gaskets I used. The factory states that 59-60 364 with the dynaflow should have 10.5 compression, but we all know how reliable factory numbers are. That is why I used 30 over 364 pistons instead of standard bore 401 pistons. I was thinking about roller rockers to. Roller rockers, dual plane the intake, and a carb spacer should get me to a solid 325 range if my math is right. Lol
power wise the Doc dual plane mod,,, and the dist. recurve and the cold air pkg gives the three biggest increases that I have done,,, the other cheap , reliable increase is to reduce the weight of the vehicle as much as possible.... :Smarty: There is a sticky on the DDP mod... check it out and the reviews of guys who did it... :Brow: If you have the tools, it costs almost nothing to do those ,,,, check out my list of cheap tricks sticky.... :Brow:
