Ken Doyle added these comments in the current discussion du jour
....
>> I can categorically say - my opinion, YMMV - that a 318 in
>> ANY C-Body car is so anemic as to be almost dangerous, almost
>> as bad as the 1st 2.2L K-Cars. You're trying to push around a
>> 4200+ pound car with only 230 bhp, which might be around
>> 150-160 net hp. The power-to-weight for even the bhp was only
>> around 18:1.
>
> The combination of the 318 and the excellent torqueflight
> trans is pretty amazing. A buddy of mine had a '68 Fury III
> with the 318 2bbl. It would beat my '71 Galaxie 351W or a '74
> Monte Carlo 350 from 0 - 60 with no problem.
>
> When the car is heavy, look at the torque, not the horsepower.
>
No matter what the weight of the car, torque is what accelerates
it, while hp is what gives it speed, especially top speed. It is
the combination of torque and hp and their relative curve shape
and peak rpms, as well as their rise and fall characteristics
that are tuned to produce desired performance from docile street
to muscle car to street drag racer to a full-blown drag-only car.
In my freshman year in Engineering School, we had an interesting
lecture and exercise that shows how the hp and torque curves,
combined with what is called "road hp" can be used to predict
mathematically the top speed of any vehicle with any engine.
Basically, when aerodynamic forces, drag, tire and other kinds of
friction, etc. combine to create an amount of hp to go faster,
and the engine cannot exceed that, that is the top speed. In the
1960s, Richard Petty was asked why he didn't go faster in some
race and pass what turned out to be the winning car. He said that
his engine and car builder had told him that at the speeds they
were running, close to 200 but before the Winged Warrier days, it
wouldn't taken 50 hp to go just 1-2 mph faster. He didn't have
it. In fact, the Hemi no matter its great reputation, did not
have all that great a hp advantage over the 427 Chevy and Fords,
thus Dodge went to aerodynamics to try to get more speed by
lowering drag, thus lowering road hp as described above.
Still, I stand by my previous statement. Having personally driven
318-equipped cars from A- to B- to C-Body and weights from 3200-
4400 pounds, I can safely say that the heavy cars were just too
much for it. Could it accelerate without being unsafe? Certainly?
But, go back to the reprints of Hot Rod Magazine and other car
rags of the 60s and see the times. It wasn't at all unusual for
318-360-383 2-barrel C-Bodies to take more than 10 seconds to
sprint to 60, sometimes 12. And, I've got reprints of B-Body cars
with 440 4-barrel, Six Packs, and 426 Street Hemi cars with gears
from 3.23 to 4.11 that gave WILDLY differing 0-60 and standing
1320 ETs. The main reason, of course, was temperature, humidity,
and track conditions. In car mag testing, you could rule out
driver error and you could depend on a good tune. e.g., I have a
test of a 426 Road Runner 4-speed with 4.11 gears that had the
attrocious 0-60 time of 7.1 seconds and the 1/4 in OVER 15! Can't
be so, you say? Well, I've got it in print.
Now, if the moon, planets and stars aligned right, small engines
could and did best far more powerful engines. e.g., in 1966, I
had a Dodge Dart GT with a 273 4-barrel, just 235 hp, 4-speed and
3.23 gears. A friend had a similar car, a 1966 Chevy II Nova SS
327/350. I could stay with him to about 50 from a standing start
before he started to pull away - using his vastly superior
torque. Used to majorly piss him off. The reason was, I believe,
NOT that one of us was a better driver but the two engines were
at opposite ends of a BIG set of tolerances that affect
performance.
--
HP, aka Jerry
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