Hi all,
I've finally got my 51 4400 road worthy after most of a year and have had a chance to drive it a bit. It's apparent after driving it a bit that the overdrive tranny I had planned for it would be useless without more power. I'm having to downshift a lot to take hills and with overdrive I wouldn't be able to maintain highway speed on much of a grade. Is this typical? The engine is a '58 235 and has good compression, no smoke, and good oil pressure.
My question is whether there would be anything gained with multiple single barrel carbs (or perhaps an Offy/Holley 390) on a vehicle this heavy (5600lbs)? I'd like to keep this engine, as it's in such good running condition but I need to be able to drive it on the highway (55 mph) for it to be useful. I don't need to go fast, just get it up to speed and hold it there.
I'm going to have my friend put it on his Sun engine analyzer to make sure that timing, ignition, fuel ratio, etc are OK. Hopefully, there's a bit more power to be gained through tuning.
Last edited by ripcord; 09/21/2008 10:31 PM.
