Quote Originally Posted by moparfever View Post
Todays oil is just fine.
No, today's oil is not just fine. It is missing the extreme pressure lubricants that it used to have. They were removed because most motors these days are roller tappets and rollers do not require the zinc and phosphorus. Also, those chemicals had a tendency to plug up catalytic converters, creating warranty claims for the dealerships, so the car makers leaned on the oil companies to remove the chemicals. As soon as that happened, we began seeing a slew of flat tappet motors pooch the cam and lifters. You cannot run an off-the-shelf motor oil in your flat tappet cam motor without some kind of extreme pressure lubricant additive to the engine oil and even then you have to have good kharma for it to work.


Quote Originally Posted by moparfever View Post
Think about how much force bears down on the tappets. Now compare how much contact area bears all that force is on rollers vs. flat tappets. Rollers have very little area bearling the load.
I'm gettin' the idea that you're saying all this because you read it somewhere or some galoot down at the Sonic Drive In told you this. You have obviously not taken much time to look at flat tappet cams and study their operation. There is only a pencil point of contact at the lobe/lifter interface on a flat tappet and pressure can easily reach 250,000 lbs per square inch.


Quote Originally Posted by moparfever View Post
Now for the single plane intakes. Yeah, conventional wisdom does say it's not as streetable as a dual plane, but real experience says something different. As a matter of fact, that "wisdom" probably comes from those small block folks. A big block generates a great signal to the carb at the beginning of each stroke due to the large cylinder cross-section. I've been using single planes on the street many years and never found them to be even slightly non-streetable, and they kick butt!
It's all about making power under curve. If you are applying more power to the tires from idle to 4000 rpm's and less power to the tires from 4000 to 5500, guess what, you're going to be faster than the guy in the other lane who makes less power idle to 4000 and more power 4000 to 5500.

I have no idea what you're saying when you say "large cylinder cross section". Would you please translate it into English so the rest of us can make heads or tails out of it.