Thread: Am I going to kill my 460?

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You could also retard the cam timing 2 to 4 degrees to delay the intake closing point, thus trapping less fuel/air mixture and lowering the dynamic compression ratio of the motor. It would be a lot cheaper than changing the things in the motor that would fix the detonation problem. Count me among those who can't make a connection between the intake manifold and detonation.

Fuel pressure was looked at initially, and it was 4.5, and I am using a new filter. As for carburetion, the 460 previously had an Edelbrock 800cfm that was a boat anchor when it came to power and fuel mileage. We went with a new, smaller Edelbrock 600cfm w/ electric choke and noticed an immediate improvement. I picked up 2-1/2 mpg fuel economy, and the car was much more responsive.

The general recommendation here locally is that the most important thing is lowering the compression ratio to make to car run better on pump gas, without the expensive juice, or additives. One of the ideas is using thicker head gaskets, and another is getting the KB pistons milled down a bit. The engine was originally punched 60 over and that isn't helping things I'm told.

My current motor guy thinks that my past motor guy didn't have much engine building experience and just slapped some good parts together without trying to get the best performance out of them. He thinks that his reasoning was, the more horsepower the better, when I am actually wanting more bottom-end grunt because this is such a heavy vehicle.

I am leery about the extra expense of pulling the motor though, I would prefer to do the work in the car, but he said that it will be easier to work on out of the vehicle, and that it will save time & money. My head hurts, and I think I need an aspirin and a beer .