I recently bought a 454 engine from a neighbor who ran it in his rock crawling truck. I plan on using this engine in a Pro Sreet/drag car and was wondering what kind of hp/torque numbers to expect. Here's the setup.

454 4bolt .060 over
TRW L2307A 12:1 with 119cc heads
Heads are 292 casting 110 cc's no port work with 2.19 1.88 manley stainlees valves
Lunati cam part# 00026
lobe separation 110
lift .549 intake 558 exhaust
duration at .050 232 in. 239 ex.
advertized 293 in. 310 ex.

On the intake I'll run a tunnel ram with two 500cfm propane mixers on it. Ignition system will need to be very hot and undecided on what to go with.

Built a 496 propane deal for a motor home about 3 years ago with two mixers on an EDE dual 4 intake with a Comp XE268 as I recall but have to check on the cam.
I dynoed it & will look the numbers up tomorrow if I can remember.
email me & rattle my cage if I forget :D

rattle, rattle :D

Originally posted by 70Chevellenurhlp:
rattle, rattle :D Sorry about that
Sometimes I forget my name is it ain't on my shirt :D

489, 10.5comp, 2 - 425 mixers,
Comp XE262-218/224-.504/.510, Wld cast ovals, FM coated skirt pistons, 36 degrees HEI
RPM TQ HP
2500-448 213
3000-451 257
3500-463 308
4000-428 326
4500-385 330
5000-367 342
5500-351 367

Thanks, do you think that's a close comparison, naturally I was hoping for more, looks like I may be dragging out the die grinder.

Running on propane sound interesting. Can serious horsepower be made? I guess there would be no octane issues, would there?

First, these numbers come off a dyno that is considered pretty "conservative". These are not inflated or "magazine" numbers :D
This was a very mild build for a motor home so it isn't a fair comparsion of a performance build but if this engine were on gas I would expect around a 10% increase in power. I did one pull to 6000 & it was 375HP but the one I posted was the one I gave to the customer as this is what the engine will be doing in it's home.
A couple of problems I see with your combo. First the 2307 will not work with a closed chamber head without modification. Second, when you get them to fit you are gonna have about 13.0 compression so the cam is way too small. With 13.0 & more cam you would see a huge improvment over this combo & it will love propane although I believe you are giving up around 10% power from gas.
I think there is an easy 100HP with 13.0 & a good cam. I would use something with about 254 in 260 ex @.050, .600 lift & 108 seperation if it's a hyd & at least 262/270 or so solid.
I don't know much about propane so when I did this I talked with the guys at the local propane company & the folks at IMPCO where I got the mixers & they were very helpful about which ones to use, compression for this application etc.

Thanks for the followup. On the heads, they are open chamber heads, this engine was pulled out running and a milder engine put back in it's place so I know the heads will work, I did notice that the block had a milled out area for the ex. valve.

On the propane verses gas issue, I was of the understanding that propane was better performance wise or maybe it's just more consistant, I'm not sure. I've talked to the man that built this engine and an engine builder that builds alot of dirt track and drag car engines and they have sold me on propane so far. Maybe I need to do some more searching, I sure don't want to give up 10% of 4-5 hundred horses do I :eek:

ejrempel as you can see I know very little about this but I think so. I don't think propane would be practical for a daily driver. Propane has about a 117 octane rating so compression would not be an issue. The reasons I'm thinking of going this route are for one, I bought this engine and it was already setup for propane. Two, racing fuel is $4-$5 per gallon around here and propane is about $1.40 and three this car will rarely be driven over 50 miles away from home, not a daily driver, more of a weekend bruiser.

I ran a propane pickup for awhile. It was a daily driver when I lived in Calgary. Propane there was about 12 cents per liter (about US$0.34 per US gallon - way back in '92). It has since gone up considerably.
I was running 10.25:1 in a 350. I had an OHG, mixer rate at 600 cfm, a blue racer cam - can't remember the specs, but a basic torque RV style cam. The HEI was set up specifically for propane - early advance, but total advance limited. The mixture was set up on a dyno, but I didn't actually get any numbers. Watch out on a propane engine - mixture at WOT is very important, and they don't like a rich mixture.
I did burn some valves once - it did not like high elevations pulling loads...
As I recall, the propane was rated at 102 Octane - not sure about your 117 number - seems high, but it could depend on the actual (local) propane composition. I was also told that the octane rating was VERY sensitive to temperature. The higher the temperature, the lower the octane got. Something to watch out for with a high compression engine down south..
You will give up about 10% in fuel mileage - not that you are going to be too concerned about hat.

Wes