Technical More power from a small block chev

63 Impala weighs 3700 lbs, plus a 200 lb driver = 3900 lbs
If you could get an honest 350 hp that would be good for a 12.90 second quarter @ 105 mph

If you’re looking to improve acceleration and don’t care about creature comforts, you gain roughly the equivalent of 1 hp for every 11 lbs shed. Things like AC, heat, radio, carpet, seats etc can go and costs nothing, gears and torque converter changes are relatively inexpensive and can yield big improvements if matched correctly. If you post your cam specs , axle ratio etc the gang will steer you in the right direction.
Cool car good luck.

 

Like @RmK57 said
Euro for Euro easiest is
H-P in Bottle ,
H-P per Euro
Not that Hard with supplied instructions /recommendations
For non experienced wanting to go faster with Limited funds,
175 shot ,
Just a Gas!

 

The Barra inline six is a great little engine, especially when turboed, but putting a Ford engine in a Chevy seems wrong. Isn't it supposed to be the other way around?............(That should liven up the conversation)

Where exactly do you think Australia is...???

 

I didn't read all the replies so I didn't read all the "corrections"
I'm also guilty of replying to threads only to discover they're 10 years old [and the OP is long gone]

 

I can answer that

 

Thanks mate. Best laugh I have had fo a while. Even spat out some lunch.
I'll try not to be too offended.

 

For a X frame car you will want to install a left upper rear trailing arm in the rear suspension. Before you do this you need to understand that factory rear end don't hold up well with modern sticky tires and tracks so an upgrade for that may be something to think about.
One of the cheapest way to go faster is to lose weight.

 

My brother printed some T-shirts that also had the East Island [guess where ??]
They were a great giveaway for his "parts buying adventures"

 

with the existing set up a good tune and gears

 

27° 00' S and 133° 00' E.
Down under
I purchase items from Joe Blow
There is a Currency Exchange
I pay , Thinking it was Euro ,

My self I installed a
Jap Toyota 2JZ GTE 3.0 straight 6 in a 32 5w
In 2014 ish , Filthy Ricer that I sourced from Japan,
I also was trying to source
1932 right hand drive column drop @ the time

 

The swap is pure hot rodding. Bang for the buck is what it’s all about and the Barra is a viable choice. Trouble is the power glide and 10 bolt rear won’t be up to the task.

Being Canadian and one of the colonies I know where exactly where Australia is mate.

 

Before going all out on engine power numbers, if the chassis setup is crap then the car will just get slower with more power.

There was a joke we had in the late 90's,
'What does a 400HP, 600HP, and 800HP Turbo Supra have in common?' They all run 14's in the ¼.

You can either make the car fast, or make it 'look' like its going fast.

Figure out what tire size you are going to run and the appropriate gearing for that and your rpm points.
More gears in between(transmission) will keep the engine in the powerband while accelerating.

Remove slop from the chassis and suspension and then go from there.
Replace engine mounts with poly, leave trans mount rubber.
Replace the crusty or soft rubber body to frame bushings with poly.
Verify the driveshaft is in good order, especially the carrier bearing.

If tubular rear lower control arms with spherical bushings are allowed, do those as well. But you Oceania boys have some funky road rules.

 

For sure lower gears in the rear but you need to make sure it can handle it.

 

The question was for the guy quoting "Euros".

 

Yeah well, that's one little bit of it, but that little bit sure is out in bumfuck nowhere. There is a whole lot more....

No euros down here mate. It's dollars and cents. Not worth quite as much as yours, but better than Kiwi's at least.

(That one's for you, @Kerrynzl .)

 

Ours is affectionately known as the "Pacific Peso"

 

Having taken a perfectly good BBC street bucket and changed it into a 9 second street legal race car (and then snotting it into the concrete wall at Meremere), I would suggest you do the following:

1. change rear gears to 4.11 or 4.56s
2. buy/borrow some ET Streets/Hoosier Quick times (dont need slicks as you likely to be running in the super street class)
3. Fit up a larger carb - say a 750 so you can still drive it home again
4. Buy a Biondo practise light set up.

If the racing bug bites real hard (it got me bad) then plan to buy a lighter car. Its probably cheaper than adding significant horsepower. The Impala can become the tow car if necessary.

It used to be that every second improvement if you were slower than 10.99 cost about $5000. Drop another couple of seconds in a race car and that $5000 might get you a tenth of that.

Also, in the street class you need consistency to go rounds. The Biondo stuff will help your reaction times, and the decent rubber will help you with consistency. In DYO, those two will be your best friends. You can still run 14s and win.

 

Hello,

A four door 63 Impala is a hard sell for drag racing. But, if that is your daily driver, and you want to go fast from stop light to stop light. There are a ton of suggestions from adding another 4 barrel carb to make a nice dual quad set up. Port/polish own heads. No need for bucks up specialty heads. A good set of smooth flow headers that go straight into the mufflers without any bends.

Now, if it is your daily driver and you do not care how your Impala sounds as you drive, get a set of 4:56 Positraction Gears or actually a complete third member from 57 to 62 will fit and give you more oomph off of the line. It is a tried and true set up from the old days. These days, there are other companies that do rear end work and use more modern parts. But, the rear gears are important.

In a flash, the 4:56 Positraction gears would be one thing to be added asap. It would help your 350 without any other mods. From your stock gearing to a 4:56 Positraction gear you will notice right away that makes a lot of difference. If it is a stock rear gear set up, it is good for highway miles, but not for those full acceleration runs on empty highways from a standing start.

Jnaki

In an add on build, the 57 Chevy Bel Air 283 got the Duntov Cam, had the stock heads, port/polished. That in it self was a power booster. Add the dual quads and now it was really fast. Soon, we got a 4 speed and took out the column three speed and that improved the transmission. But the one thing we did was to put in my old 4:11 Positraction gear set third member and took out his 3:55 unit. That Positraction unit made the 57 Chevy almost unbeatable on the local “Cherry Avenue” drags location in Bixby Knolls.

After running for a while, we finally put in our 4:56 Positraction third member (from my 58 Impala) and now this 57 took off. Simple modifications without spending much at the time. This additional boost from a Paxton Supercharger was going to be the final addition to the 57 Chevy Bel Air Hardtop to boost his power so much more. But, college called and we all went off in different directions.

But, today, expenses are what you want to do to make the power necessary. Dual quads seem ok for your application, but with the carb only proposition, how about a Paxton Supercharger for added boost to your motor? YRMV

Note:
If it is a real stop light to stop light proposition, learn the light system. Like don't go when it turns green. There is a small advantage to a yellow light going dark and the green coming on... take that timing to reality... practice. By the time you are across the intersection, the green makes the next lane that much slower.

 

You may have already done the following, but if so, you did not share with us:

What exactly are your goals ?
(1) trailered race car? desired ET ?
(2) barely streetable
(3) good running street car with some weekend racing
(4) "get as much horsepower while keeping it normally aspirated"

Is reliability important? Some of the NASCAR folks got some serious HP from a 350, and did so on carbs before NASCAR mandated efi. But the engines weren't generally built to last forever.

Once you have specified your goals, specify your current modifications. Now you can determine a path of modifications, with a cost; and compare it to your budget.

Sounds like an interesting project; have fun!

Jon

 

Hid the center bolts with adapters, epoxied the fill tube in a vortec intake

 

Will Farrow took the restrictor plate off the red dragon to make it faster, not exactly street legal...so let's keep that on the down low.

 

Still waiting on a reply to the questions in post #2.
I don't want to recommend stripping out to reduce mass if it's not a track car.

 

Kinda of a cam, compression and head combo topped off with a good induction and exhaust.
Maybe the OP can fill in a few details?

 

New heads preferably aluminum that will bring your compression up , cam , intake and carb . Then every thing else to make the more HP work in the car from gears suspension High stall converter if its a automatic and so on and loose about 500 pounds some how .

In the 70's I played with a 61 Impala and tried to make it fast Going to a Camero was a lot more effective for the money at the time .

I seriously doubt that car with a honest 350 HP at the fly wheel will break in to the 12's real life VS calculations are often not close to the same thing.
There were a lot of cars back in the 80's that had way more HP but still ran 13's unless every thing else was done to the rest of the car .
I spent two years getting a 67 Chevelle into the 12'90's back in about 79 and were talking a 12-1 .060 over 327 , well ported angle plug heads , huge Crower solid cam, tunnel ram 2x4 660's 5:13 gears , 4 speed , 29x10" slicks and cutting the fender wells to make them fit, race shocks traction bars , softer rear springs , and taking most of the interior out. I know the engine made 400 HP plus and did it on a dyno more than once on two different ones , Back then a 13 flat car that could do it on street tires would beat the majority of the cars around and it was very common to not see a sub 13 second dial in at the Wednesday drags in the street class at Sears point on drag nights . I had to run Super street and then add slicks and drop the exhaust to make it happen.
That set up beat a lot of BBC and even a 426 hemi Cuda that tad more HP on the street .

OP its not just a couple of big things its a lot of little things

 

I can't disagree that lightening it up in some areas would literally be free. Can't disagree with changing gears or suspension mods but I am surprised that (unless I missed it earlier) Budget36 was the first to mention exhaust. To me a set of equal length headers is a relatively low-cost way to making HP. All the suggestions of better heads, etc. would also depend on getting rid of the exhaust to make power or those improvements would just leave HP on the table.

Lynn

 

Horsepower / Weight is a factor for terminal speed . How quick it gets there is a factor of torque multiplication.

Every time you double the speed you need 4 x the power to overcome resistance
eg: Going from 90mph to 105mph requires 36% more power
SO there are more gains "out of the hole" than at the top end.

I see this often where somebody spends $1000's on a high hp penis extension, just to get their doors blown off by an underdog

You need to look at Larry Nelson's 55 Chevy
This car weighed 3083 lbs + 200 lb driver [3280 lbs]
The engine was a 4v 265 [stock intake, stock carb, stock lift cam]
The engine made 258 hp at 6238 rpm and 217 ft/lbs torque


Now the secret [shhh] 6.14 rear gears
The times in 1972 was 13.20 at 102 mph [the baby 265 was turning 7500 rpm through the traps]

Larry sold the car and purchased it back again 52 years later and restored it.
It still does 13.20's at 102 mph with a baby engine.




I love "Stock" racing [It is the thinking man's class]

 

Yep, almost every race is won or lost in the first 60 feet. That's why they list it on the time slip.
Weight is the enemy..... The cheapest way to go faster is to take stuff off.

Here's something amusing that AI spat out about racing driver weights. It is cut and paste. I have not changed any of it. I don't think AI is fit-for-purpose just yet...

"NASCAR drivers are generally slightly taller and heavier than F1 drivers. The average NASCAR driver is around 69.8 inches tall, while the average F1 driver is around 69.3 inches, a difference of just over one centimeter. In terms of weight, F1 drivers are typically lighter, with an average around 680 kg, compared to NASCAR drivers who average over 1,474 kg."

 

Yea, want it Quick! Weight reduction , HP, and the ability to plant that power, suspension tuned and engine .

 

About 20 years ago two buddies kids built up 70's Cameros and one spent lots of dad's money on a high end small block chevy best of everything roller cam and such. Had about $7000 in the engine. Then did gears to make the higher RPM work better.
Other kid pulled a 454 out of a Suburban spent $400 on forged pistons and a cheap overhaul kit and a $100 cam.
Ported the heads and a used intake and a cheap plate nitrous set up .
Spent less than $1200 .
The BBC car was a second faster and more streetable.

 

Well you either spend a shit ton of money to build a high horsepower small block that is indeed pretty quick or you set up what you have to be dead nuts reliable and go out and run in the brackets and do the same ET every time even though you aren't the fastest car out there by far. I've got a long time buddy who see listed in the winners list or top three in his bracket about every time they run the drags here and he runs a low buck 16 second car. He probably has more fun per dollar than 90% of the guys who race there every weekend.