:D hey jackson here! , my dad and I built a 68 el camino with a 12 to 1 compression 383 stroker , with eagle h rod pistons and a compcam 280 high lope , 202 aluminum edelbrock rpm heads , ,solid tappet lifters , comp cam roller rockers , solid one piece pushrods , airgap edelbrock intake , 750 demon carb, tci th 400 reverse valve body with a shift kit, with a 3600 to 3800 stall , 410 posi. I was told that a desktop dyno with all my info said I'd have 500 horsepower with about 490 torque. I've asked my dad this question before , but never really get a staight answer ,i know that driving this on the freeway would be winding it out around 75-80 , ( i plan on drag racing it 70% of the time and the other 30% driving it 7 miles everyday to work, four days a week )but if I were to drive it a three to five times a year to events ( 100 miles both ways) would I be over working the engine and or straining the engine and loosing the sharpness of its kick at the track? also what is the correct pinion angle for best hookup and is this a reasonably streetable truck ?

I doin't know, buit pass me another beer too.

By my definition, thats not very streetable. You would do better with at least a point and a half less compression, if not two points at a solid 10:1 with that cam. Thats enough to run that camshaft right, yet it keeps you out of the trouble that 12:1 comp can bring. With those gears and that converter, dont count on cruising anywhere near 80. Im not sure of your tire height, but assuming you have 28 inch tall tires, 80 miles per hour would be about dead on 4000rpm with a lockup converter. Assuming your non lockup converter in the 400 only slips minimally at 5%(all non lockup converters will have some degree) that puts you at 4200rpm for a 80 mile per hour cruise, and not much less at 75. Assuming your tire height is much less than that, at a safe rpm of about 3500, you wont see much over 58-62 MPH. By the way, run a GOOD tranny cooler with such a huge converter cause your tranny wont survive long at all along with a good fluid pan(for better cooling than a stocker). Which cam is that actually(you got a part number). My guess is that you will have a very hard time running pump fuel with compression numbers like that. I wont say for sure cause I dont have all the important cam specs, but Id guess right now there is a very good chance that it wont work unless you severly limit the tuneup. Also, if my assumption is correct, you will probably find that cranking compression is very high as well, so youd better have a good starter in there unless you dont mind changing them fairly often. Find me a part number for that cam if you can, or at least more specs so that I can find it myself(it is a solid right?) and than I can give a little more conclusive answers.

"solid one piece pushrods"

Is this correct? How do you get oil to the valve springs?

Originally posted by Pat Kelley:
"solid one piece pushrods"

Is this correct? How do you get oil to the valve springs? =
Picky,, picky :D :D

sorry got lost in description, they have holes thru em , ! as for the cam I'm gonna have to get back to ya on that , I was told that the cam was around 280 , i do have specs on it , just gotta dig em out and repost, I'll do that tonight after work!

Yeah, if you could at least provide all the advertised duration numbers, and .050 numbers with the valve lift, I can probably find it myself. Or, if youve got a card, post everything on the card you can including those numbers I just mentioned, lobe separation angle, advertised intake and exhaust valve opening and closing angles........ Whatever you got.

I'll bet its the universal 280/230/.480/108 cam.

Sean, as long as you dont mind the noise and going 65-70, you can drive that car anywhere, if you bring your compression down. The gain on 2 points of compression compared to running pump gas isnt worth it in my opinion. Especially with your smaller heads and cam. You can drive anything anywhere if you can put up with it. I drove my Nova with the 4.11's to St. Paul last summer for car craft. Drove all over the place that whole weekend, and drove home. Probably 650 miles total. Its a bit over 4 hours up to St. Paul from my house.

You'll get tired of buying $5/gallon race gas to go back and forth to work in a hurry. Nobody mentioned it, but that thing is going to get about 8MPG on the freeway, probably about the same around town. Hard to believe there's still anybody out there who would build a 12:1 engine and plan on actually driving it anywhere?

Tom

my dad asked me when we built this did I want it to go fast or just drive it around the street , I wanted street/strip , I think he was thinking only strip , I have ran 97 in the garage and it ran ok, but it sounds a hell of a lot better of high octane , I guess I can always swap out the cam in the long run , I have three cars and I'd drive this when my pockets are full , but it would be nice to enjoy it full time . as for the cam I think you were right that it may be the universal 280/230/.480/108 cam. the heads are rpm performance edelbrock aluminum 202 heads, and the intake is a rpm air gap perfomer edelbrock too