HEMI-Powered wrote:
> 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
Interesting info & story, Jerry. My old (c 1975) Direct Connection manual
states that in '66, there was a special version of the 273 that was
installed in Darts and dubbed the "D-Dart". It had a Holley 4V carb,
steel
tube-headers, and a solid lifter camshaft. It made 275hp (1hp/ci). Not
too
shabby! Was yours a D-Dart?
Bryan
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