RamAir95TA

Sorry I lied...

Joe Overton broke into the 9s naturally aspirated.

9.94@135.47 1.44 60'.

Mindgame

Are we talking ET or power here. Suspension playes a big part in the former.... more so than power output. Is Joe's car a "street driver" or something that rolls to the track every weekend and stays out of highway traffic during the week.
There's a big difference there. My goal was to build something that will idle all day long in traffic, go get the groceries, and run the track on the weekends.

Jim, I hear you. I have been fortunate in getting everything together compared to the stuff you've been through!
I've been keeping up with your project since I first heard of it and can't wait to see what she ends up doing. No contest to it... this is just something that I'd like to see and I will silently be cheering your efforts on.
No doubt about it.... this is gonna be one mean RX7, the likes of which The Fast and the Furious Crowd has never seen, lol.

WRT the 1-3/4 headers....
Based on what I've seen from my drag race engines, a 1-7/8 header is a necessity on any 383+ cid engine making this level of power.... running a 1-3/4 just costs power, especially in the mid range. So I think that's a necessary step... too bad noone makes one for the general population (4th gen F body).

Keep us posted man. I should have some more results once I get the headers back.... which will probably mean a bit more tuning, but I'll keep everyone informed.

-Mindgame

Dean77

Jim,
Fortunately we are able to choose the customers we work with and as you have known for months you are not one of them. A lot of issues with the manufacturers of the gear sets caused us significant delays as Mark was well aware of. Enough said. As far as your parts here are the UPS tracking numbers from 1/17/03 #1z010x400313197425 and dated 3/4/03 #1z010x400312797976.
On a side note from a fellow LT1 enthusiast - looks like you have quite a combination going there - good luck with it!

Dean

jimlab

Well, for the last month at any rate, since you blew up at me for complaining about the situation in Advanced Tech. While it is true that you can choose the customers you want to work with, the customer must also choose you. Snide comments like the one above do you more harm than they do me, in my opinion.

The bottom line is that you were unable to deliver in a reasonable timeframe, and the customer (the one with the money) was inconvenienced by it. Rather than endure further delays, I chose to eliminate the problem by purchasing new parts instead. I appreciate your situation and thank you for the apologies that were made during that time, but apologies don't get the job done, unfortunately.

It is my understanding that the Jan. 17th shipment (not received until the 27th, according to UPS) was the eDist harness only. January 17th was the scheduled dyno session we missed, BTW.

The March 4th shipment (received on the 11th) was my Cloyes timing set, I believe. It is my understanding that my polished front cover has not been returned yet. If you're going to keep it, I'd appreciate some token compensation at least.

Thanks

Dean77

Jim,
My biggest issue with the entire situation was you never once called us or emailed us to tell us there was an issue with delays that were completely out of our control. We made sure to keep your engine builder up to date and we were never once told the delays were unacceptable or asked for a possible interim solution to meet specified dates.
All it would have taken was a phone call or email anytime from yourself personally and I am sure everything could have been resolved or at worst case understood. If you worked with us instead of against us we could have helped you with other solutions.
As far as the timing cover, I am still waiting for an email as to what you or Mark feel is fair compensation for it and I will be happy to send you a check. I guess no one again felt the need to let us know. I know you took my customer comment as offensive and I guess I may be harsh at times but I have little tolerance as do most professionals for customers and suppliers alike that feel the need to degrade you with second hand information and ZERO communication.
I am sorry things did not work out better for us both but I wish you the best of luck with your LT1. If you feel the need to continue to post negatively that’s your choice.

Regards,
Dean

Mindgame

WRT a 700 hp NA LT1... I don't see it being too much of a problem. The question is, how radical do you want it and does it need to fit the general description of a "daily driver"?

Of course everyone's opinion differs on where that line is... The truth be known, the engine I have now could probably go 700 hp if one wanted to spin it to 7500 rpm. Never mind the fact that an engine like that wouldn't be something I'd care to drive everyday.

If you wanted to do it streetable-like, then you'd just need an sb2.2 or splayed valve head and a cam similar to what I'm running. Then you could make your power at 6800-7000 rpm, which is still plenty streetable for a professional level engine build. The Dominion head flow numbers I've seen are impressive no doubt but I have seen professionally ported heads flow close to the same numbers on the intake. The Dom's exhaust numbers are out of this world though.... maybe too much of a "good thing". I'd think you might see a bit of overscavenge there if it wasn't compensated for in the cam. Maybe we'll see one in action one of these days.

-Mindgame

jimlab

Well, to be perfectly honest, I didn't even know for sure that the parts had been sent to your shop until the incident in Advanced Tech. In fact, I truly was linking to the picture of the modified front cover on your site as reference for what I'd been told had been done to mine, not realizing that I was linking to the site of the shop actually doing my cover.

I assumed my parts had been sent to a vendor closer to the west coast doing similar modifications, and the only references made to that vendor that I remembered from e-mail was the name "Dean", which I had no way of associating with you. It wasn't until after the exchange in Advanced Tech that I dug through my backlog of e-mail and found that NE Dyno had been mentioned once by name early on, and I hadn't caught the reference. Not knowing where the parts had been sent and relying on someone else to act as go-between, I didn't really have a choice in contacting you, and felt it was better if I stayed out of it anyway.

I was led to believe that it had been well communicated to the vendor that we had a scheduled dyno session on the 17th of January and needed the parts by that time, because I was told that the vendor had apologized both before and after we missed our date. I was about that time that I was informed of the problem with the original timing set, and that the subsequent search for another was causing the delay. However, I was also led to believe that the problem had been resolved and that the parts would not be long in coming. Then the harness showed up in late January, and that was the last thing that we received.

Another month went by, and then finally I'd had enough. It wasn't solely the non-delivery of parts which caused me to vent in Advanced Tech, although that was part of it. It was a long series of delays that has kept my engine from being finished for the better part of a year now, and the front cover was only the last on the pile. As I've said before, I'm sorry that it turned out this way for all involved.

I'll send you an e-mail and we can discuss a fair price for the cover. I'm fine with you keeping it and using it on another installation now that I have a new one, but wanted at least some compensation for closure.

Fair enough. I was told that apologies were being made but that no parts were being delivered, and that tends to make me upset when I'm paying the tab, so I guess we're even.

jimlab

Precisely. My car won't be a daily driver, but it did need to be fairly streetable. The chances of being caught in stop and go traffic are pretty good around here, even if I'm not using it to pick up some groceries.

We chose to go with a smaller cam than we'd been discussing earlier and stick with lower (11.8:1) compression to run on pump gas and get better drivability in exchange for some potential power on the high end. I actually changed my mind again and asked Mark to have an even milder cam cut while we were down waiting on the ignition, but he said that I should wait until the engine got in the car and then decide whether or not it was necessary. He thinks that it'll be very livable as-is. We'll see.

Hey now.

My engine isn't suffering for low end power just because it can turn 7,500+ rpm when called on. Then again, peak power will probably be at about 7,000 rpm, so there's not much use in pushing it to 7,500 rpm, even if it is still making ~620 horsepower out there anyway.

I'm very interested to see someone build an NA engine with Dom/Arao heads also. I don't think the intake numbers are as impressive as the exhaust numbers, but I don't know what effect that'll have on an NA combination. I didn't consider them because they're big and heavy (comparatively), two things that were outside my requirements, and we could get what we needed out of more traditional heads.

Of my few regrets, one is that I didn't foresee that we'd be losing the Opti-spark and the intake, eliminating the need for an LT1 block altogether. It would have been nice to start with a Bow Tie aluminum block and get the weight savings and a wider choice of "exotic" heads (without need for modification). The second is that it didn't look cost effective to go with anything other than a 23-degree head at the time we chose the 215s. If I'd known that I was going to have custom headers made and knew that we could have gotten a set of 14 or 15-degree heads for around the same overall cost, I think I would have gone that route and gone a little milder on the cam. Hard to say... hindsight is 20-20, of course.

Mindgame

Don't take me the wrong way there Jim.
The point of making more hp is in extending the revs of the engine. All good and fine but you have to gear to the rev range. Now, you're building a very light car so your requirements aren't gonna be exactly the same as a guy who's gotta make a 3500 lb car move down the 1320 in a hurry.

For race cars, you move the torque curve as high as you can and thus the hp... then you gear for that rev range because you get more engine output with more revs. That's just typical racer law and it all depends on the tranny, gearing and weight of the car... suspension limitations play in that too. More than just engines right?

Granted, the best engine for your setup is gonna be different for the 3300+ lb F-body crowd.

Later,
Mg

jimlab

I wasn't, I was just kidding around.

Very true.

David96Z

I was just about to say the same thing

jimlab

I e-mailed Joe. Maybe he'll stop in and give us a bit more information, since I was unable to find details on his engine on the forum or his web site, except that it's a 388 CID solid roller.

LTOne4Fun

What do you want to know? Still has Opti, LT1 block. Last weekend ran 137.5 and 137.8 or so mph, with a hesitation off the line (1.50 60 ft)

DA was 1500 or so, so it may end up clipping near 140 in some negative DA, at 3100 lbs or thereabouts

jimlab

The subject of the thread isn't "fastest NA LT1" or "quickest NA LT1" it's "most horsepower with an NA LT1".

Trap speed and E.T. tell me almost nothing. Trap speed can roughly be equated to horsepower if vehicle and driver weight is known, but they're not. One would assume that an engine of this caliber saw a dyno at some point, either in or out of the car, so that's what I'm looking for. How much power is he making, how big is his cam, and how streetable is the car?

LTOne4Fun

Uhh, 137.5 mph, in bad DA, at 3175 lbs. Everythign is there to do the math.

Its not much for a streetable setup, but you said whats most power LT1 makes NA, not whats the most powerful street LT1 makes.