Kinda simple question here.. I'm doing some long term planning for my next motor, and I'm just getting to the drawing board.. this is a couple year's off, in the mean time I may or may not do a cam (I was going to, but then I made a personal-life screw up, so things got put on the back burner).
back to the question.. for a BBC, with iron block and aluminum heads, HP series holley carb, alum intake, roller rockers w/ stud girdle, rect port heads, forged internals, flat solid/hyd roller/solid roller cam, and other quality parts, what is the hp per ci range you can expect? No coatings, or other stuff, just a well-built quality engine.
I am pretty sure I am going to keep my 320cc runner rect port 116.5cc chamber Dart heads, but other than that, I don't know what else I'll keep.
and since I'm dreaming a little, does this change considerably if you use fuel injection?
I'm looking to stay NA for looks and simplicity, but I get jealous of the 550+ rwhp stuff I see all oven the blown smallblock "other brand" forums..
For me simplicity would be an EFI system, I didn't grow up with carbs and they scare me. If you could get a decent tunable system for 454-540 for a reasonable price, I'd probably jump on it.

matt

With decent heads & a roller a 10.0 compression pump gas engine should have no trouble with 1.4 or so

Thanks for #s.. I'm only getting 1.19 hp/ci right now. 545/550hp 460 (10.15:1). I think the cam is just too small, but others have said the head size is the bigger problem (320cc runner dart rectangles). Cam is a 286 @ .006, 230 @ .050 .639 lift hydro roller.
oh well..

thanks
matt

Fuel injection doesn't change the HP a motor puts out by any significant amoount. It's all a matter of fuel and air; and once the fuel is in the cylinder, it forgets all about how it got there, and just burns, and releases its energy.

Concentrate on AIR FLOW, and make sure you can deliver the fuel to match, and HP will naturally just occur.

I know EFI doesn't help max power, but I'd like it for driveability/tuning issues. I'm alot more comfortable with a laptop than fumbling with the all the variables inside a holley. I'm probably just doing to do a big-cube carb'd motor in the end, but, I know what I'd like..

matt