NHRA Expands Factory Stock Showdown

[D.Johns]

Originally Posted by GarysZ24

The first paragraph of your message Tracy had was true, but just like the evolvement of racing, people were always going to try to make what they had created produce more power, and it's recently proven to be more and more true even since the mid '80's when mass produced FI engines started the good by (to carbs) era. However, your last two sentences of your second paragraph proved my point too. If you're going to change the way fuel goes through the induction system, then all elements of it's transistion to the cylinders should change, not just the initial part. What once was carbs/manifolds/heads, is now FI, manifolds, heads. Just like an engine has to be made stronger to handle nitrous oxide, an engine that's going to produce cleaner emissions (and more power as well), has to have improvements made to all areas to make it work better. Thus what I said about getting more power out of less cubes, due to the enhanced fuel systems we have today.

I remember reading some articles headlines. "The end of the Hot Rod era, Fuel injection." I remember reading about all the guys ripping off the EFI systems in 86 Mustangs to back to the tried and true Carb/manifolds and was making more power(in fact the 85 car was rated at 210hp and the 86 was 200). In fact there are still guys pulling EFI off their race cars to switch to carbs and are picking up ET.
The 86-88(except for the 88 California cars) were all speed density and couldn't compensate for agressive heads, cams and intakes. The mass air cars helped out and guys learning the "new" way of hot rodding started to catch on. This is really were metered FI injection really comes into its own. You can run more aggressive on things and not lose the street ability of a daily driver at idle and part throttle driving. Computers can advance/retard cams, change timing and fuel based on air mass and O2 readings, pull timing in cases of knock or detonation.

The intakes can be made in multiple configurations without having to be locked into a general design(although I've seen some mighty creative carb set ups). The new cars(talking street cars) are making a lot of power out of smaller displacement engines for a multiple of reasons. Such as better materials, better manufacturing abilities and being able to run at tighter tolerances. They can run more aggressive cam profiles, thinner ring packages, have computers to map all variables and not to mention all the hot rodders experience on how to build a better engine.

On the street EFI is king for superior drivability. On the race track everyone has their own preference. I personally prefer EFI.