Don Terrill’s Speed-Talk

rustbucket79 wrote: ↑Sat Feb 10, 2018 1:27 pm
My 10 bolt (8.5) has a Strange spool, 33 spline axles, c clip eliminators, TA cover and bearing cap studs. Is that the setup you run? What brand of gears and ratio? N/A or power adder? Tranbrake? Stage RPM? 60’ times?

I would love to throw a set of 4.56’s in the car but I am concerned about breaking a gearset and messing up a $4000 transmission 🤬.

Looks like your axle is plenty strong already. When my rear axle suffered wheelhop off the gate ( bad track prep plus overpowering the stock leaf springs ) the ring gear let go but the pinnion was ok. Yes the TH350 first gear broke too. Was a foot brake launch.

I do believe a 456 pinnion will take your engine's power, just avoid wheelhop.

Have you a T brake?

AFR 245’s, ports definitely larger than the tunnel ram I used. (Didn’t bother to port match the intake)

TH 400 with brake, have launched from a 5400 2 step on a well prepared track. (You know you have good traction when a 6000 stall feels like about 500 short

rustbucket79 wrote: ↑Sat Feb 10, 2018 6:16 pm AFR 245’s, ports definitely larger than the tunnel ram I used. (Didn’t bother to port match the intake)

Thats tells a lot about the powercurve we saw on the comparo graph you posted IMHO.

TH 400 with brake, have launched from a 5400 2 step on a well prepared track. (You know you have good traction when a 6000 stall feels like about 500 short

Holly cow!

And BTW you don't need to cut the hood to use a T-ram, just pull it off.

And BTW you don't need to cut the hood to use a T-ram, just pull it off


Ha Ha Ha I like that.

F-BIRD'88 wrote: ↑Sun Feb 11, 2018 12:14 am And BTW you don't need to cut the hood to use a T-ram, just pull it off


Ha Ha Ha I like that.

Open the link in my signature and you will see why I wrote that

Sorry for the little Hijack OP.

The good news is that there's performance available at relatively low cost, I think you could pick up performance by just shifting the first two times at a higher rpm. That doesn't cost much, other than a risk of failure and some added stress to the valve train. The other good news is that if you don't change it too much, missing a shift point will be no big deal. That flat HP curve? is nice to have.

I agree with the larger stepped headers. I tested a couple of sets once and there was 15 HP difference between the two pairs. Both were 1-3/4" stepped to 1-7/8" long tube headers. The upswept ones with nearly a straight shot out of the port were a little longer and made more torque, while the crossover curved upswepts made more HP. I had anticipated that the straighter headers would have been better, even though they were a little longer. That's why we test things!