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First places to start making upgrades for improved performance

1K views 16 replies 8 participants last post by  Hippie 
#1 ·
After improving carb, intake, and gears what's next to upgrade? Don't say just engine, please be specific (heads, cam, whatever) Right now I have a 350, 270 cam, 3.73 posi gears, about to get an edelbrock performer rpm air gap, holley 600, drag radials + racing rims, 350 trans. What's next to upgrade? Besides my cam I dont know anything else about the inside of my engine :confused:
 
#2 ·
Think of a engine as a air pump, the more you can pump in the better, but what can be pumped in must be pumped out. Your next step is small tube headers plus dual exhaust and a X pipe. If you don`t have headers and duals already you`ll pick up plenty of power and torque. Since I don`t know the specs of your engine heads wise, I don`t know what to tell you to replace them with. Also need to know is this a street car as I`m thinking or a weekend play thing. Another good upgrade is to fine tune the distributor. Get a advance curve kit, along with a Flame thrower coil and module by pertronix. Also get a good set of aftermarket spiral core spark plug wires and route them correctly. Cheap parts store plug wires won`t cut it, and don`t buy anything with Accel written on it. Also add a K&N air filter. Once we know more about the heads and compression ratio along with intended usuage, we can give you more information to move you ahead.
 
#4 ·
you want us to be specific, you also need to be specific. the better information we receive the better information you receive. What is the vehicle being used for? Is there a target horsepower? Does gas mileage matter? What are your engines specs now? Is it just a stock 350? What kind of gas do you want to run? Premium, mid-grade, regular, racing?
 
#6 ·
Tis no big deal Co. For the biggest part in my personal experience as well as others Accel products are junk. I got a HEI supercoil right out of the box that wasn`t any good, went and got another one it lasted 2 weeks. Had plug wires check with high resistance right out of the box. Had plug wire ends pull off easily. Spark plugs that were no good right out of the box. The biggest kicker was my brother ordered a new set of 8 accel injectors for his 85 corvette with TPI. 3 of the 8 were bad and did not work. Mr. Gasket and accel are one in the same, the quality control is out to lunch.
 
#9 ·
Pull a valve cover, the casting numbers will be under them.
for the rest of the info, it`s not important if it`s a smog engine or not, but it is important to know the compression ratio so ask the builder what type of piston he used, was the block decked and overbored. Lastly when we know this with the head casting numbers we can calculate the compression ratio and tell you if the heads you have are good performance pieces or smog junk. The heads play a large role in performance since flow is power, but everything else must work together with it to create max performance.
 
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