Well it's nice to know I have some friends out there who care! I am not going to tell you my tax bill and I would not be surprised if Streets' is larger. One thing the younger members may not know is that once you are off a payroll with deductions you have to pay the IRS Quarterly Estimated Taxes as well as local property taxes (it was an unwelcome surprise to me!). Although my tax is probably less that for Streets, it did make a dent in my engine plans. Today Joe Bultler cc'd one of my rebuilt heads and got 75 cc after a slight shave and the pistons are in and the deck turned out to be 0.016" so I could still use a thin head gasket to get higher compression as well as more quench. So far I have not figured out the volume of the double eyebrows in the cast pistons, one guy says 7 cc and another says 4 cc. That makes the final compression with a 0.040" gasket as either 8.8 or 9.0 to 1. For Richard/Tech1 I was hoping he would say some really great things about the performance of the 184/194 @0.050" cam but it looked to me that I might end up in second gear a lot more with the mileage cam and as I said if I ever upgrade the rear to a 3.55 that cam really would be a limiting factor. No I do not plan to do 90 mph in second gear, but with a 2.79:1 rear gear I might want to hold it in second for an on ramp. I am selling my 461 heads because of the lack of accessory bolt bosses and high compression and I think I will end up with something like the Goodwrench Universal 350 which is rated at 240 H.P. with headers and a Performer intake. At least Jim/Hambiskit partially answered my question about primary header diameter and I will go with the 1 5/8". I note that the 350 in the Dec. 1995 Hot Rod article "Low-Buck Small-Block Buildup" used 1 3/4" diameter headers and their cam was 280/290 adv. duration with 0.443"/0.465" lift at the valve from PAW compared to my Crane 10010 cam with 260/270 adv. duration and only 0.398"/0.420" valve lift, but as Hambiskit says and as confirmed by flow graphs I have seen for the 882 heads, most of the flow increase is over by about 0.400" valve lift anyway and so I will end up with about 240 H.P. but hopefully good torque to pull the 2.79:1 rear. Anyway you can see from just the few comments you have made how different a person's goals can be and I am content that I did as well as I can for the bucks required. If Streets got 18 mpg with a 383 SBC and a 2.79 rear gear (when the blower was off) and the Magoo '29 roadster got 18 mpg with a hi-po 327 and a 3.08 gear, I think I can hope for 18 mpg with a 2.79 gear and while that is still low compared to a hybrid Prius, it compares favorably to one young man I talked to with a 350 SBC driving a two-speed Power Glide who informed me he was geting about 12 mpg! I HAVE learned a lot from your comments, thanks.

Don Shillady
Retired Scientist/teen rodder