Please be careful, it's ok to know you're over your head. I had a 454 in a little roadster, and the first real drive had me shaking. An older rodder i knew said to remember, the throttle closes too. Imagine the bad scene when you pile it up in your subdivision. Not cool. Rig up a long travel throttle and be strapped into the car firmly. If thats not enough, put a smaller cam in it, at least temporarily. Thats what makes an engine rowdy, not a given power level.
Back in the day...when I was drag racing every weekend....we used to always chuckle when any pre-1936 type vehicle would come to the line. Generally too much motor and no way to handle it. Of the four vehicles I saw go into the guardrail, 3 were '33 Ford type and one was some sort of Model A. For every guy who took time to work out his car so it would go straight down the quarter, there were 20 who thought they could show up one Day One and have it all come together.
I have found that my drag race mentality no longer works for where I live. I have a 12:1 427 in my 59 el camino, and it is bad ass, but when I put it together, I lived a couple minutes from town, so mileage, noise etc made no difference to me. I now liveway out in the boonies, so just driving to town for a pack of cigarettes became an hour round trip, on a one lane, twisty mountain road, where I can rarely exceed 30 miles an hour, and have to constantly manuever to keep from wiping my headers and oil pan. I have since removed the gear drive,replaced the dual fours with a 750 holley, and replaced the 3 inch exhaust with glasspacks with a full dual set out the back with magnaflows, and a smaller(ls6 454) cam. She still runs hard, but is more suitable for the driving I do now. with the power guys are getting nowadays, I'll never be top dog, but I still love the freeway on ramps. At this point, I'll sacrifice some of the power, just to enjoy the car.
Sounds to me like your truck would be way too much fun. I'd say finish it up and enjoy the heck out of it. Always respect it and the more you drive it you will get used to what you can do and learn what should not do I've driven high powered cars on the street and after a while they start feeling slow for some reason, when in reality they are not. Too much power is all in how you use it I think.
I drive a car on the street commuting for a little while that ran 9's. It was a NHRA race car. With the big stall converter not too bad to drive as long as you respected. Just can't get on it unless you have flat, level, not tilted, dry, no sand etc, clean pavement. Then wheelies!
This is a circular proposition........"not enough common sense" leads directy to "too much motor"........ Ray
Too much motor is not usually a problem. Too little common sense, does tend to create problems, however.
I would say there is such a thing as too much motor but you want to get as much power as possable out of your motor choice, that is a given. The law of diminishing returns will always set in after you drive a car for a while. I'm running my draagster engine in my A but it is still just a 338ci Y-Block, I know it will move the car at a rapid rate when it's finished but there will always be a need for more.
It may depend on how you like to drive. I had a 240Z with a nice motor and suspension that I loved to sling around every corner I could find. The Z made 160-180 HP and I always felt it needed a bit more. I also wanted an American car. I bought a 1970 Corvette set up the suspension and dropped a ZZ502 in it. It was everything what I though I wanted. I was wrong. If I pinned the throttle in 3rd anywhere in the (very wide) powerband, the tires would not stick. With all that torque it was extremely difficult to modulate the throttle and with the posi, it would immediately head for the guardrail in a corner. That motor was a hazard to me at anything under 70 mph. Mark Donahue might find it pleasant to drive, but for me it was way too much. I'm just glad I was old enough to be afraid of it or I would probably be dead now.
Most of the comments refer to the trade-off effect. You always have to give up comfort for a wicked hi-horse motor. The whole point of hot rodding is to put as much motor as you can in the lightest car you can find THEN try to get it to steer and stop! peace
Because I like to drive my cars, it must be manageable in traffic on hot summer days. I had a Vette with a roller cam, Dominator carb and very low gears. Sure, it sounded great and ran hard, but I only drove it when the weather was cool and it was a local drive and there was no traffic.
Its like asking if a woman has too big of Hooters? You might get used to it and be comfortable flogging the crap out of it. My middle son Chris was born to turn wrenches , he started with a go cart when he was three. Got a honda trail 50 when he was five. When he was six he as he put it popped his engine. So he installed a cyl head & carb from a 70 on it. First thing he opened it up and promptly pulled a wheelie. scared he slowly drove back to the shop and put the smaller 50 carb on it. In just a few days he was back installing the larger 70 carb. the first time I drove a semi with a 425 hp cat I thought it was too much power. The peterbuilt I last drove had a 475 cat and I was always wantinig a 550 hp cat engine. The guy that owned it stated it would run past 100 mph. After a week of me of driving it he made that statement again. I told him 80 mph going down a steep hill in 13th gear loaded to 80,000. when you got to 80 the compueter shut down the throttle and turned the jake brakes on. I guess what im trying to say it just depends on how big your b--- are. OldWolf
OK, where's the ACTUAL car you are talking about? Seems like most seem to think you are referring to your avatar, even though you said you weren't. So, come on, show us what you're talking about.
There's one facet of a radical engined car with stick that nobody has mentioned: speed at idle in first gear. If you get stuck in some traffic inching along at 3-4 mph and your car idles at 10+, you'll be riding that clutch pedal a lot - and hating it. I gather you're in the Dallas area - traffic is an issue. Abd a lower # rear ratio would make that even worse. RE controlling the throttle reaction vs pedal travel, I am glad to have read this thread. That's something I had not considered in my project ('30 A with 455 Olds and Muncie), which is nearing the stage for gas pedal and linkage. Thanks, HAMB - yet another great idea that will save me some trouble.
The old 305 I used to run in my T was a fun practicle engine for the weight of the car. It was very streetable. The 350 I have now, keeps me on my toes. It won't hook up, if I stomp it at a light. I have to walk it out, then go full throttle. Then, it's fun. When I find an open stretch of flat road, it's beautiful. If I had 400+ HP, I'd never get to enjoy it. I'd need a bigger car or at least a better chassis setup, but it's a T Bucket, so not much to do there. Then, the question would be, why? I don't have a roll bar, so I can't take it to the strip. The streets around here aren't good enough for me to be racing on. If they were, again.... why? Bragging rights and always having the dyno sheet in my pocket would be cool at the hangout, but other than that, all that HP is wasted. About every other month, there's a video on YouTube showing some couch racer crashing his new Vette. Now there's a car built for the HP, but the driver has no skills. Bottom line, if you want all that power and can handle it safely and efficently, go for it.
This. This was my final assessment of my ZZ502 Vette. The only place in the street I could make full use all that motor to do anything other than create clouds of tire smoke was on the freeway. And then what? I could go from 70 to Traffic Court faster than any other car on the road, but frankly that doesn't make up for the controllability compromises I had to accept in the corners. That Vette would have been much more fun to drive with a nicely set up small block.
No such thing as too much power. I can't tell u that in the 80's there was a woman that used to drive a bitchen 69 Camaro. This was in the San Gabriel Valley, she had the "balls" to have 'If you beat me, You can eat me" written on her car! Now tell me she didn't have a lil bit of HP under her hood! Or the other option?! LOL.
Call me the odd man out but I get more enjoyment out of thrashing a well built motor of medium power to an inch of its life then I ever possibly could having to ride/drive something carefully in case things get out of control.
Ha I had a bare SBC block kill my back once, I don't know that the engine was too stout but I discovered that my shoulders were too stout for my back, I guess. While I am thinking about it, there used to be a street rod (glass deuce roadster) that ran a Lingenfelter motor around here. This guy had too many dollars and not enough sense. After a year of letting that motor try to pretzel that thing the doors would not latch or close properly, the body had cracks everywhere (that is just what I know of). I am not sure that the car had too much motor, I think that the motor didn't have enough car. Here is the rub, there will never be too much motor if the car is built around it. A lot of cars that I see on here and even on the strip have too much motor because they don't have enough car to go with the motor. Someone mentioned record breaking motors the other day. Really a pretty uneducated statement, there is no such a thing as a record breaking motor. In order to break records you need a record breaking car and driver, the motor is just part of it. Given the proper parameters there will never be too much motor.
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