Thread: HP Vs. Dollar, Bang for Buck...

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We are having a great discussion in our car club about HP per dollar ratio and what is the most bang for the buck. I would love hearing what you all think would be the way to go, duel carb blower? Single or duel turbo's?(Ernie Banks style?) Nitrious? Big compression, Big cam? Stroker kits? Let me Know, I think around here it's a toss up between Blower and Nitrious. Spout off guys & Gals and let it fly, no feelings to get hurt here!!

Dollar for dollar, my bet goes on nitros.

Don

Originally Posted by Itoldyouso

Dollar for dollar, my bet goes on nitros.

Don

.....I'll also bet on the nitrous..... I mean, after all, how can one possibly beat hundreds of HP for hundreds of dollars???? Everything else is hundreds of dollars for dozens of HP or thousands of dollars for hundreds of HP....

well I'll go for the blower, because over time you have to keep filling up the bottle and thet is an ongoing expense

large bore small stroke and for add on's blowers or alcahol guy who uses it round here said its only 2.50 a gallon i was like :O i havent looked so i wouldnt know lol

I'd start with a 500 Caddy,can't beat cubic inches,and I can generally get good ones for less than a buck an inch, and giggle gas, let it blow if it wants. Hank

I like Halftanked's way of thinking! Stock cubes are the cheapest, and a 500 Cad is tops. Let 'er blow, they're cheap!

he guys quit picking on the 500
ill need another one of those when mine eventually goes to the great steel pile in the sky
go get a olds 455 the bottom ends are pretty tough, i think they would handle the gas better

i'd buy a cheap handgun, shoot my opponent and slowly cross the finish line... and it does have a lotta bang too

How about oxygen and acetlyne. Cut it up to make it lighter, don't spend any money on parts just cut old parts off.

Originally Posted by chevydrivin

How about oxygen and acetlyne. Cut it up to make it lighter, don't spend any money on parts just cut old parts off.

.....yeah I'd forgotten about this one. Just cut off everything that doesn't make it go faster! I once had an '84 Camero that weighted around 2700 lbs. I cut EVERYTHING off that didn't pertain to making it go faster. Even lexan windows, cut the ends off of long bolts, etcccccc..... It sure was faster cuz of this! zzz

Petersen Pub. Co. used to print a "Hot Rod Annual" which I tried to collect and somewhere around 1971 or so there was an extensive set of dyno runs by Iskederian Eng. on modifying the SBC 350. They got it up to over 480 H.P. without nitrous or any forced induction but in terms of (HP/$) the simple change of the stock cam for a mild Isky cam gave the most increase of about 63 HP for the price of a reground cam. For many years I was hooked on the idea that all you had to do was rebuild a 350 and change the cam. However, when you read the dyno charts carefully you can see that the low rpm torque drops off considerably when the cam is selected for more HP in the 4000 rpm range. That is why I now look at the low rpm torque since that will be the operating range when cruising in 4th gear OD. I just found the old article and the HP gain was 62.3 HP for the $55 Isky 280-H cam with a peak HP (I assume at the flywheel since their stock baseline was 293.7 HP at 4000 rpm.) With the only change being to the 280-H cam they got 356.0 HP at 5500 rpm. For comparison, the stock cam produced 170.8 HP at 2500 rpm but with the 280-H they got 158.7 HP at 2500 rpm. Using their old price that was (62.3 HP/$55)=1.13 HP/$. Probably a similar cam can be bought for even less today from Speedway, but of course that is the old way of measuring the HP at the flywheel and it is obvious that more HP at higher rpm degrades the low rpm HP. This is just playing with numbers but you said (HP/$). Overall I would agree with lt1s10 that adding a Roots-type blower would be the best way to add a lot of HP, but then what about overheating and crank bearings?

Don Shillady
Retired Scientist/teen rodder

Sorry fellas, IMO if all you want is the best bang for the $ then you cannot come close to nitrous. Period. And I am talking about total expended dollars and effort here, not just parts cost.

That said, the fastest way to wrecking the average engine is nitrous also. But that was not the quest here ..............

Kitz

my vote goes to any forced induction, a couple grand for just about double the HP of what you had, continuesly, whenever you need it.

Originally Posted by brickman

We are having a great discussion in our car club about HP per dollar ratio and what is the most bang for the buck. I would love hearing what you all think would be the way to go, duel carb blower? Single or duel turbo's?(Ernie Banks style?) Nitrious? Big compression, Big cam? Stroker kits? Let me Know, I think around here it's a toss up between Blower and Nitrious. Spout off guys & Gals and let it fly, no feelings to get hurt here!!

N2O,by far is the cheapest investment.Over time a blower or a turbo becomes less expensive than N2O.