re <VV> Breaking out

[Tony Underwood]

At 11:50 hours 06/07/2005, Padgett wrote:

>>  I was really pulling for the Monza and to see it lose
>>by such a tiny amount of breakout (even though technically the Vair got to
>>the finish line FIRST) was disappointing.
>
>I lost interest in drag racing when they started with this "breakout" 
>nonsense, after all with the right electronics can make a car run on a 
>coupla thousandths every time (build to speed then back off at finish). 
>Also reason everybody has an automatic now.
>
>Of course have always been more into roundy-round.
>
>Biggest difference from when Corvairs were new and now is tires: 
>cantilever slicks were just coming out in '65 and modern rubber can do 
>almost anything.
>
>However don't know modern HP. After all they are measuring NET and old 
>style measured in SAE, about 30% higher. So when a modern GTO with a small 
>block 366 says 400 bhp, that is a whole bunch more than a 1970 450 bhp LS-6.

But THAT is where the questions pop up.   That 454 is a helluva lot more 
engine than the aluminum V8 in that new Holden.    HP ratings are getting 
kinda bizarre anymore, and we fall back onto the questions again of final 
performance on a dragstrip:

Put that LS-6 454 into a '66 Chevelle body and put sticky slicks on 
it.   Put it beside a new Holden GTO.   Both these cars are about the same 
weight.  Run them both through the quarter-mile.    See how far ahead of 
that Holden GTO that LS-6 engine will be yanking that Chevelle long before 
either car hits the lights.

This question has been asked time and again regarding 1960s engines and 
their advertised horsepower ratings.   The figures we see bantered about 
today just don't figure up according to the performance of the vehicles in 
question.

You touched upon the answer...   tires, helped of course by multi-gear 
transmissions with computer designed gear ratios to take advantage of 
snap-switch powerbands in today's powerplants.    Rubber on yesterday's 
supercars was nowhere near what's available today.   A Hemicuda in 1970 
would smoke the tires halfway down the block trying to hook up...  THAT is 
why the cars were only turning mid-13 second quarter-mile times at around 
104.   Put some modern rubber on the same car and it suddenly becomes a 
whole different ballgame.

A 440 Challenger R/T today will turn low-mid 12s all day long...  on 
TODAY's tires.   In 1970 the car was hard pressed to manage 14s.   Up in 
smoke...

This is why a '64 Plymouth sedan weighing in at around 3650 lbs with a 
Max-Wedge engine would barely hit low 14's in street trim in it's 
day.   But the same car today wearing good rubber will easily beat that 
time by better than 2 seconds, in street trim, happens all the time, 
knocking on 11's door loudly.

Another thing I'd like to see is an honest dyno rundown on some of today's 
smaller hi-perf engines.

I have a dyno readout for a 1966 Chrysler 426 Hemi engine as measured by 
Chryco at their R&D labs, under controlled conditions.  The top HP in stock 
form was 463.   They listed the engine in the distributed brochures as 
being 425 HP.   That's not all:

That same engine was making 492 lbs-ft of torque at 4000 rpm.    It was 
making 413 lbs-ft at 2400 rpm.   It was making 405 lbs-ft at 6000 
rpm.   Between 2100 rpm and 6250 rpm this engine made more than 400 lbs-ft 
of torque across the board with a peak of almost 500.   THAT is power.

It's no wonder that the 426 Hemi was almost legendary in musclecar history 
and still rules several classes in professional drag racing to this day and 
in fact is back in production again, across the counter to anybody who 
wants one.     As the saying used to go, there's no substitute for cubic 
inches.   And the Mopar 426 Hemi had breathing capabilities to exploit its 
displacement, capabilities which still are serious contenders to this day.

It will still, when chassis-mounted to a good platform and configured 
correctly, outperform just about anything new anywhere, inch for 
inch.   It's kinda like the SR-71 Blackbird of car engines... it may well 
be over 40 years old but it hit the steep sloped curve early on, and nobody 
has come up with anything better since.



>Of course everyone was lying back then anyway (290 hp from a Z-28 ? Sure 
>at 4800, just don't ask about  6500.

Actually, that figure was  pretty close.   And the 302 Z engine wasn't 
rated at 4800 rpm.  As I recall, it was rated at a 5600 rpm.   It wasn't 
easy in the late '60s to get a production engine to produce 1hp/ci and the 
Z-28 cars were pretty close.   I'm still of the opinion that the '70 LT-1 
was hard pressed to actually produce 370 hp, likewise the 327-375/365 
'Vette engine.   Good strong engines but the figures were stretched a tad, 
I think.   Make the Z-28s and 'Vettes look better.


>Particularly when the engine they want you to buy, the SS-350, is rated at 
>295 hp which is just under 10 lb/hp to appease the Insurance companies.

Back then, it was insurance.   Big HP ratings meant big insurance 
payments.  Manufacturers stayed busy sandbagging horsepower ratings.   The 
'65 396 engine was a good example.    The General rated this engine at 425 
hp at 6400 rpm in '65.    Later on, the SAME engine was rated at 5200 rpm 
and at 375 hp.

Ford rated their 428 SCJ engine at a measly 335 hp which was 
ridiculous.  If you ever saw a '68 Mach-1 Mustang with a SCJ go full tilt 
through 3rd gear (once it finally hooked up) you'd see how silly that 335 
hp rating really was.   Those SCJ Mustangs habitually had  LT-1 Z's for 
lunch... one such instance pleased me no end, guy I know with an LT-1 was 
convinced that it was King and he ruled... until a bone stock Mustang w/SCJ 
blew him into the bushes one night... guy grudgingly admitted to having his 
doors blown and paid due homage to the Blue Oval and the 428.

The Olds W series engines also cranked out more horsepower than the figures 
suggested.

And of course Chrysler's 426 Hemi came in two variants, the "Race Hemi" and 
the "Street Hemi".   The above dyno test was for a street Hemi 
engine.   The race variant was a 13-1 compression solid-lift 
crossram-intake radically tuned monster fed by a pair of 800 cfm Holley 
carbs, and idled like death from above... while the street variant was 
relatively well behaved and would actually idle fairly smoothly at ~900 
rpm.  Chrysler rated them both at 425 HP.    We've already seen how the 
hydraulic cam'ed street Hemi with 10-1 pistons was still good for over 460 
hp.   What would the race variant make?  Nobody seems to have any genuine 
dyno pulls...     It was available off the dealer lot in late '64 through 
'65 and in 1968, or rather, you had to go pick the car up in 
1968...  Chrysler put the '68 race Hemi Darts and Barracudas together at 
the Hurst plant across the way from the main Mopar facilities and to get 
one you had to pay cash and go pick the car up at the storage 
lot...  unless you knew somebody who could get it transported to you.   And 
then it came with absolutely no warranty of any kind... you had to verify 
that it was OK and running to suit you before you signed the dotted line 
and took possession of the vehicle.   The pre-'66 Race Hemi engines were 
more prolific, able to actually get one of them in a B body Dodge or 
Plymouth straight from the dealer lot although it still remained a "special 
order" item.   They were terrible street engines, ate gas, used oil, fouled 
plugs unless you got on it "regular", rough idle/shook and rattled, 
required frequent valve lash adjustments, and they broke driveline stuff on 
a regular basis.    It's no wonder it was replaced by the "street" variant.

They only built about 100 or so of these '68 model year monsters, although 
more have been "cloned" after the fact with crate engines.    They're kinda 
similar to the Yenko Stinger in concept.


>Its all marketting.


Yep.   And a lot of this marketing is geared towards convincing everyone 
that today's stuff is so much better than what we had.    If we all 
believed this, we'd not be driving Corvairs.


tony..