Since I'm not building race engines anymore, I can share a few tricks of the trade. The one I really liked was being able to turn an engine 1500 RPM faster than the competition on a restricted-size carburetor, and nobody could figure out why. The question I usually asked my customers was "Do you want it legal, or fast?"
That particular engine was built 100 cubic inches smaller than the one everybody else was running, and that made a Holley 7448 350 CFM carb do things it just wasn't supposed to do. When the 350's we were running against were turning 6200 RPM, mine was turning 8,000. Every casting number that was visible during a tech inspection indicated it was a 305. The short stroke crankshaft that made it a 255 cubic inch wasn't technically "legal" for the class we were running, but the casting number was buried way down in the crankcase. LOL!
Jerry
