If you want to be compe***ive, forget about 87 octane. You pulling thru a small carb, so you need to pull on it hard and squeeze the hell out of whatever you pull in. Small combustion chambers and at least flat top pistons. What are the casting numbers of the heads, and the date codes (under the valve covers)? You should not guess at cams, contact Brent Lykins at Lykins Motorsports and he can work you up a good one. You don't want stuff like machined combustion chambers, they are big and give away compression
Heads are C7AE-A, off a 390 4bbl engine backed by a 4 speed that was trashed I'll have to contact him sometime and talk about cams. I sourced a 428 crank, with supposed CJ rods, and it comes with 390 flat top pistons.
That piston is exactly what he described it as,it is meant to be formed to fit the combustion chamber being used,the 427LR and other standard FE heads of that era used an as cast CC that differed greatly in shape from the 427HR,MR and TP which were all machined chambers,that piston could be final shaped to give max compression in one or the other,but if it were shaped to fit into 1 of the as cast chambers while it would probably fit into a machined chamber it would no longer give max CR.
Measure you compression height on those pistons. To use the 428 crank you will need 390 low compression truck ( pickup) pistons. Sometimes they will say “. 410” on the area around the wrist pin. 390 car pistons will not work ! If you bore your engine, just order 410 pistons. ( if they still list them) Bones
That Comp Cams cam should be okay on a longer track. What is everyone else using, I mean the RPM range. At short tracks we used ones in the 3200-7000 range so it pulled hard off the corner.
Well if you got a 410/428 crank by all means use it,be aware though that unless you have mallory metal installed in the crank to internally balance it you will have to use an external balance flywheel/flexplate.
From an old racers perspective you need to have some guide lines in place so you can move forward with your racing career. What are the rules? Anything goes except a 500 cfm carb? Get the rule book, make a budget, money is going to be flying out of your hands faster then you can replace it. How compe***ive do you want to be? Top 3, Mid pack, Back of the pack lapper, constantly getting the bird and the front bumpers? Everyone has to start somewhere so a good start would be get the most weight OFF the front end as possible. Aluminum bumpers, radiator, water pump, intake manifold, valve covers, drop base air cleaner, c4 trans or 3 speed manual and remove 2nd gear... A high low set up. once you remove 100 to 150 lbs of the front end your tires will thank you. I started my oval track racing late in my racing career with a division called cl***ic stock, Vintage cars from the 60s- 70s with what I thought would be fun for 3000-5000 dollars. It morphed into cars that needed 25k-30k to be compe***ive, we had about a 20 car field and dwindled down to about 6 cars as the season ended. compe***ion is tuff even in the beginner divisions. Good Luck!
The Jalopy Journal
