another horsepower question

When my husband brought my monte for me the guy we brought from said that a package had been put in the engine. He brought the car to run on the strip but decided to go with a rice burner and needed the money to fix that one up. He said that what was put in it was a edelbrock rpm high performance package with a 650cfm carb. I can not afford to tear it down to find out if everything is there. I do know that it has a 650 cfm edelbrock carb and edelbrock valve covers. also i have been told by someone else that i have a stronger than stock driveshaft. The guy we brought it from said that with the package i should have 396hp. The more that i read about all this the less i am to believe him. he said that it had been done a long time ago but that there were not many miles on the engine. there is no place local to take it to be dyno tested. How can i tell how much hp i have and how much torque. It is a sbc 350 in a 71 monte.

The Dyno is the way.....anything else is just a guess. If you have a list of the parts installed they could be plugged into a desktop dyno program to give you a better guess.....

The horsepower stuff is just a game, anyway. Without putting it on a chassis dyno, it's just a guess. I doubt you would be using the car for a drag car, so why does the hp even matter??? Torque is what is needed to move a sled that weight... If the hp number is important, use 325 for the number. Sounds respectable, but not so high someone would question it....

thanks for the answers. i am just really curious about the numbers and my son tells me that him and his friends discuss horsepower alot. any idea what the 71 had in the way of torque? can not find a definite answer to it on the web.

:LOL: that i can do very easily. broke a motor mount last week by putting my foot half way into it from a dead stop. squalled about 75 yards and then made a very, very bad sound. came to a stop and found that my fan blade was shaving my shroud. thats with a 2.72 10 bolt rear. now changing motor mounts

From what I have seen at the E-brock site the 396 hp is possible. Does it have E-brock aluminum cylinder heads? If so then it might really be possible depending on the CR. If the heads are not E-brock then I would be more skeptical.

Kitz

jyardgirl according to my Chilton,s auto repair manual your 71 came with (2bbl carb) 245hp@4800 with torque of 350@2800 and 8.5:1cp. The 2 engines with (4bblcarb) came with 270hp@4800 with torque of 360@3200 with cp8.5:1 or with 330hp@5600 with torque of 360@4000 with cp9.0:1. I don,t know which engine your car came with but that,s the numbers they give for that year model 350.

it does have the ebrock cyl. covers,carb, breather, and a mallory dist. with a hei coil. also it had a spacer under the carb which i removed. i doubt it seriously that i will ever go top end in it. if that helps any. thank you old trucker. that is the info i was looking for. i quess it is time to throw away the haynes and get a chilton.