Hi, im currently looking at an 84 camaro with a 400 small block with 400 horsepower, i was wonder what i could do to get way more horsepower from the block before i go into getting a super charger and possibly a nitrous oxide system. It has already a 3.73 gear posi eaton rear end, ractchet shift/automatic T700r4 trans, and a custom exhaust with flowmaster delta 40 series mufflers i believe. If you want to see the car/engine/interior please leave your email and ill send you the pictures. But please give alll the input you can.

P.S i was thinking after buying it of getting a 427 or a 454 blown motor to drop in it, tell me what you think and the extremes of the suspension and frame reinforcement i would need to take. Thanks!

What does the 400 have in it for parts now?  What's kind of numbers do you have in mind when you say "way more horsepower"?  

Well it is hard to say what the block has, i should get a list from the guy of everything i just been busy lately, and for way more horses i was thinking of better carburators, pistons, intake manifolds, pulleys, exhaust headers, things like that to gain further more horespower, im just really looking at what would be the best for my application. Thanks for responding!!  

better carbs, better pistons, better pulleys, blah, blah

arent you being kind of general? give us some info on what you can and cant do, your budget, your plans with the car, ect, at this point you come across as not asking for help but more as looking for someone to talk to, dont spare us any anything

Before you go changing all that other stuff,  I'd say to identify the heads, cam, and all the other components you can.

Like Gibs said, first you have to know specifically what you already have, your goals (street, street-strip, or strip), and your budget. so you can improve upon it, and/ or get advice specific to what you really want to know.   

... but, generically speaking...   I would do a head and cam swap. You may be able to pick up close to a hundred horses (from 400 HP) with the right heads and cam if your intake, carb, headers, fuel system, and ignition system are all up to snuff....

well i will do some general speaking also, and saying to get 500 HP out of a 400, some 270 CFM will have to be pushed through the motor, get yourself some AFR 210's and a cam with around .550 lift, so your duration should fall around 240-250 @ .050 (unless some high ratio rockers are employed), and try to get yourself a 114-115 LCA (assuming a stock length rod), figure in everything else to make this combo possible (things that YC said+ machine work) and start typing out a budget, then add $1000-$1500 to that price, then start saving up!

Hey, well money wont be a problem once i get the car, i was planning on making this a street-strip car, right now it has 3.73 posi eaton rear end, custom exhaust system, looks like stock exhaust headers, and thats about it for what i know right now, im still waiting for the reply from the guy. But thanks for the input, and machining things i wont have to worry about my dads friend has a shop set up for machining. Thanks.  

well i guess sky is the limit then, but with that 700R4 you wont have much luck on the drag strip, it will be really hard to get traction in first gear and gear drop from 1st to 2nd is huge, but this is a sacrifice you usually have to make if it will see street time. But while we are at it i guess i will give you another example, if you are trying to push 500 HP through the motor, and you have a #3500 car, then you can run into the low 11's says my sliderule (you may or may not be able to duplicate this, it's dependent on alot of other things) but with a 3.73 gear and a overdrive with a 28 in tire, you speed through the traps would only be about @ 4000 RPM's, now you arent going to make a 500 HP engine peak HP @ 4000 RPM's unless it is a very large displacement engine choked off a lot, so from a shear performance standpoint lower gears are better, but also another thing that would be better is a larger motor, when you already have a 400 you have a large SBC, you can make this even larger if money is no object, and get that motor to make some grunt low to help band-aid that low trap speed RPM. A 5.86 gear would put you closer to your peak HP RPM (with a common 500 HP 400)at the traps, but think of how horrible the traction would be with that much torque multiplication (launch ratio of 18.4) so you would go with a three speed anyway, and also then have less rear gear, this would be the best for shear ET's

"if you are trying to push 500 HP through the motor, and you have a #3500 car, then you can run into the low 11's says my sliderule (you may or may not be able to duplicate this, it's dependent on alot of other things) but with a 3.73 gear and a overdrive with a 28 in tire, you speed through the traps would only be about @ 4000 RPM's, now you arent going to make a 500 HP engine peak HP @ 4000 RPM's unless..."

Just to add to your (anyone who cares, really) database, my chevelle weigh's about 3400lbs with me in it. It ran (with the old motor) a best ET of 11.13 @ 119mph w/ a 1.53 60' in cold November air at close to sea level, usually it ran mid to high 11.20's @ 117mph w/ a 1.57 60'.  I've approximated it's hp at or near 500.  Here's the stat's on my car:

406 cid (400 .030 overbore), Flat top full floating pistons, stock crank (balanced), eagle esp 5.7 rods.

AFR 195 heads (68cc chamber) with Ferrea 2.02/1.60 valves / competition valve job from a reputable race machine shop.  The heads were milled once due to slight blown headgasket damage, but I didn't ask the machinist how much he took off to make them flat again) Never ported at all.

Crane solid roller cam 250/260 @ .050  .600/ .625 lift (yes the machine shop who installed the valves and did the valve job set them up for this cam).

TH400 w/ a B&M holeshot 3600 (pn 20425) which actually stalled at 4500 in this car/ setup.

12bolt with 4.30 gears, 10x29 goodyear slicks

750 double pumper, 1/2" fuel line, good fuel pump, msd, timing locked down (no advance) at 41 degrees, 110 octane race gas (just to be safe when racing ... I drove the same setup on the street with 93 octane) , 1 3/4" hedders, electric fans, drag springs, drag shocks, battery in trunk, sway bar removed.... I shifted the car at 6500rpms and went through the lights at the finish line at about 6000 ....  

That's about all the stats I can think of that matter. For the record... I would have never chosen the 195 afr's for this combo, but I alread had them.... and they turned out to be torque monsters. My guess is that when I launched the car at 4500, I was just past the torque peak and on my way to the hp peak.

sounds like a great budget combo, just proves with some knowledge and some hard work, even on a fairly restricted budget good ET's can happen.

Did the engine really like that much timing? in theory since AFR is supposed to have everything "going on" you would think you would need less timing with a efficient chamber like that, but i guess it depends on gas formulation and compression vs intake valve closing as well

AFR is good stuff, i wish i could have a set fall into my hands like that haha. A local mudraccer here brought a set of CNC small block ford afr heads to a ex lingenfelter head porter here with a flowbench and he said to take em back out the place, he couldnt improve them any (there may or may not be some truth to that though, ask bogie). Its amazing that as you go higher into their cylinder heads that the valve sizes never change, they just keep flowing more air through the same size valve, at with their big block chevy magnum lineup.

Jeff Kotulak from Rascal Cams always told me to stay away from crane off the shelf stuff because of their out of the ordinary slow ramps, if you are interested in possibly going a little faster, maybe you could talk to him about a grind, he only makes custom grinds, but go to his website and find the custom cam form if you would like, see what he recommends. He's a very smart man, previously was a engineer for GM and will help anyone that shows the interest, and isnt in it for the money, sorry to sound a little like a commericial, but he is such a great friend of mine and is so helpful and i really think he has got it figured out, so if i had something that i wanted to run times, id just want to use his stuff, but if you've had good luck with crane in the past, stick with em.

just another thing i saw too, you are probably pushing the limits of a 750 CFM carb. I would love to get a 830 CFM 4150 main body and couple it with some billet metering blocks and billet plate from the new ultra series carbs, sounds like a great thing with screw in mini jets for the power valve restriction, idle feed restriction and everything else, but i dont know if holley has made the blocks a seperate part # yet. And you may or may not need the extra tunability, im just blabbering about what i would like, haha.

Just another thing i saw, i always thought that you were supposed to stall 500-1000 RPM's before your torque peak so your flash stall would be right at torque peak, if you ever have your car put a on chassis dyno this would be interesting to see where it would be at, also just to say out of my three ways of obtaining HP estimates your engine comes to out to 520 in one, 530 in another, and all the way to 600 in my third, just food for thought. See Ya!

Those heads didn't just fall into my hands, I bought them (new) when I had a 355 in the car, with intentions of either going roller with it, or perhaps a 383... If I had known the 406 was going to be in my near future, I would have bought the larger AFR's (I chose afr's from reading Lingenfelter's book, and the respect he gave them sold me).

My good friend, who got me into racing, has had best results with crane cams, by trial and error. He has been racing and building engines since '89.  So I chose a crane cam with the durations that seemed appropriate for what I was doing. I dont doubt that there is a camshaft out there that will/ would have made more power and/or torque... but that combo worked pretty well for me.

just another thing i saw too, you are probably pushing the limits of a 750 CFM carb    Yes, I later upgraded to a bigger or better carb. A Bobby Taylor racing carb. I never got to run it in the same conditions as when I ran my best ET, but on the night I tried the two carbs back to back, the "new" bobby carb did go slightly faster with more mph.

Just another thing i saw, i always thought that you were supposed to stall 500-1000 RPM's before your torque peak so your flash stall would be right at torque peak  Stall, flash... tomatoe, tom-ah-toe...    with a manual valve body, going very slow (25 mph) in high gear and floor it (assuming no tire spin), the engine will go to whatever rpm the convertor will allow... this happens to be the same rpm (or really really close to) the rpm where the motor "goes to" when you launch on slicks in low gear.  I don't typically use the word "flash".  Especially now that I have a trans-brake... stall speed is stall speed.  I have read that stall speed is where you can hold the car back with the brakes, but flash is something different. It's a totally confusing subject when you interject such a wide spectrum of variables... (brake quality, vacuum, front to rear bias, etc, etc). But to get back to your meaning...  It may be ideal to stall right at your torque peak... but since I never dyno'd my engine or car, I just used the convertor I already had. (behind the previous motor; a 355, it stalled at 4000). I launched at 4500, shifted at 6500, and went through the lights at about 6000...  Kept the rpm drop to a minimum, while maintaining a powerful launch.  Would a different launch rpm (stall speed) have helped my et's?  perhaps 

The motor in the car now is totally different, although still a 406. Domed pistons.    -.003 deck hieght , ported bow-tie heads,  ported victor intake.... approximately 13:1. The cam is a custom grind that I have only little knowledge of, which I posted several months ago, but it seems too large for the maximum rpm (7200) I'm willing to push this engine (274/274 @ .050 w/ .655 lift or something like that.. it was a bit larger than the standard roller .630) . A borrowed Bo-Laws 950 holley ...  just to summarize.    I've only run the car one evening with the new engine. It overpowered my rear suspension, which gave me lousy 60' times, and the mph wasn't as high as I had hoped... so without going into detail now, I still have some tweaking to do. I may try to find your camshaft guy and get a reccomendation from him... perpaps a custom grind.

hey while your at it tell me what ya think i have a 383 sbc with dart alum por 1 230 runners 2.08-1.60 valves med port work angle milled to 68 cc from 72cc have harland sharp 1.5 rollors a isky 602/602 cam bot sure of duration somewhere arouns 250. forged aluminum flat tops,forged h-beam rods and scat 4340 steel crank holley hp 750 carb 1/58 headers msd billet distr and msd 6al ummm victor jr unported intake that ran 11.01 in a 3700lb car with 1.52 60 ft. and 4.10 gears any info would help and no ive never had it on the dyno ohh also running it on 110 oct with 34 degrees locked and hitting with 125 shot nos thanks.....

just to say something about your new setup, dome pistons scare me, haha. i believe you should be looking at some burn patterns once you get it up and running, check out this article by Jim McFarland about reading piston crowns and chambers, it is a very interesting article that taught me a lot.

http://www.n2performance.com/lectures/combustionlecture.pdf

ill tell Jeff that you will be contacting him, then he will be likely to grind a custom grind for you instead of pushing you toward a off the shelf profile that is "close", haha, he's a mopar guy, but he quoted me $167 for fairly wild big block chevy custom grind for a solid flat tappet + $15 shipping so its not like it isnt reasonable, i cant imagine that with a mainstream grinder that you will get out of the door with a custom grind in your hand for less than $200 for a solid flat tappet

because im unsure of the flow i cant make a estimate but it sounds like a good start, and a good platform to work with. more than likely the flow from as cast wasnt hurt since the times were so good, but like i said i cant really make a estimate. I know one thing im not a fan of isky cams since they usually have more than adequate amount of overlap (depending on LCA of course) but that engine will like a lot of duration as those huge ports arent going to start working till high revs. The carb and headers sound awfully small, also some lower gears would probably also help. Timing also sounded kinda high, as without the nitrous theoretically that would be about 42* total. I can tell you one thing though, my sliderule says that a 3700 lb car needs 530 HP to turn a 11 flat @ a theoretical 125 MPH, now factor in a 20% drivetrain loss (very, very general but something) and this about 665 HP @ the flywheel, with the nitrous of course. Consider though this may or may not be true, I love how bogie puts it, "this is just #### and jane playing with numbers"

depending on the severerity of the porting performed on your heads they may be flowing more air at points above .600 lift, if the LCA is already at a fairly wide point (assuming it would be, since nitrous was used) then employing some higher ratio rockers might gain some more top end power. Depending on E/I Ratio or how exhaust duration the profile has, it may help or may not help on the exhaust side, but ratio increases almost always can help on the intake side, where more valve area is more commonly a good thing

Gibs,

I think he meant the same as I did when I said that the timing was "locked". It's a bracket racing trick/ technique.  Since you have a convertor that stalls higher than any advance weights maximum rpm, it's useless to have the advance mechanism swining around in there... but the real reason is consistency. What if one or both of the weights "stuck" or "hung up"... well, the timing would be different from one pass to the next, making it more difficult to dial in your car and win that round. No fan clutches, no vacuum operated devices, etc. There are dozens of ways to lose a drag race, so any little thing you can do to make the car more consistent helps you concentrate on the things you can't control as easily.