H-I-J '76 Nova re-fit.

[Greg Reimer 7376]

Something doesn't seem quite right if the car goes 6900 at 117.50. That's fast enough to indicate that the engine makes a reasonable amount of horsepower.You said that it has 5.14 gears and goes 6900. That almost seems to me that the car needs more gear. My 327 Chevelle in I/SA had 5.57's in it when I ran it at Pomona a few years ago, and it has a Glide with a typical stocker converter. It ran 7480 in the lights, and it felt like it wouldn't go any faster, it was pretty well done. That figures out to 68 RPM per MPH. I put 5.38's in it, doesn't sound like a huge change, but that is 61 RPM per MPH. The engine seems to like it better, although the first half of the track is about .03 slower. The overall result is about the same. Your engine seems to pull fourth gear OK, but a little more gear would make its job a bit easier. You have a car there that is consistent, and a consistent set of results run to run. Maybe moving the cam up might show some results. I don't think I would change too many pieces until I had some answers. The clutch would be one thing to investigate, how ever.

[Glenn Briglio]

What rpm does it make max hp at? What rpm is max torque at? How is the torque at drop rpm of shift and how is torque curve on up from drop off rpm?

[Nmbr1GMfan]

Originally Posted by Greg Reimer 7376

Something doesn't seem quite right if the car goes 6900 at 117.50. That's fast enough to indicate that the engine makes a reasonable amount of horsepower.You said that it has 5.14 gears and goes 6900. That almost seems to me that the car needs more gear. My 327 Chevelle in I/SA had 5.57's in it when I ran it at Pomona a few years ago, and it has a Glide with a typical stocker converter. It ran 7480 in the lights, and it felt like it wouldn't go any faster, it was pretty well done. That figures out to 68 RPM per MPH. I put 5.38's in it, doesn't sound like a huge change, but that is 61 RPM per MPH. The engine seems to like it better, although the first half of the track is about .03 slower. The overall result is about the same. Your engine seems to pull fourth gear OK, but a little more gear would make its job a bit easier. You have a car there that is consistent, and a consistent set of results run to run. Maybe moving the cam up might show some results. I don't think I would change too many pieces until I had some answers. The clutch would be one thing to investigate, how ever.

Greg, thanks for the insight. I believe for what we have it makes great power and runs well, I have always thought the car needs more gear as it runs currently. I also believe if we had the old head that was broken on the engine now this may be a non issue. The car runs fairly well so messing around with the gear now when we're going to swap heads and manifold just to change the gear again isn't in my plan. The problem isn't so bad in good weather but Autumn says it's dead in 4th when the air gets bad. We do have a couple tuning things to try when we get back to racing, but since we'll be changing the setup with new heads I'll not get too far into it. Thanks again.