last time we saw the old 350 rallye engine Nick was just about ready to move the freshly rebuilt small-block over to his dyno room for final testing now we stop back in for an update after he spent his whole friday working with the golden v8 we finished putting the whole engine together and this morning we ended up putting it on the dyno and then we ran for 20 minutes to break in the camshaft get all the testing will check for a vacuum leaks oil leaks, everything went fine then my customer came in then we said okay let's that's the for horse power and torque and we started getting HP like 350 360 370 but we're far away from 400 but from the factory this thing did 310 horsepower and there's not many modifications on this motor we maybe brought the compression up a little bit but a little cam we did some port work and that's about it but we're really looking for 400 HP, so we tried everything we can all day now after a Now, after a long friday spent working on the engine. we find Nick and the 350 still in the dyno past closing time he's tried a big double pumper carb he experimented with different spacers bolted on bigger headers but kept falling just short of his clients goal. and we're stuck with 391 horsepower and now my customer left the dyno room I guess we're giving up on it and that's it but i have the customer bringing the intake manifold the original piece because here we got the aluminum one from the Edlebrock I needed a fitting so I can continue putting the fittings on their engine. he brought it in and what a surprise, i look at this ... and i'm impressed i realized that this intake manifold seems a little bit different from the Edelbrock. the carb seems to be sitting a little bit higher the runners are a little bit wider so I said maybe this one could make the extra horsepower we're looking fir so now i was thinking like okay let's try on the motor, so I called my customer and asked what do you think it was Nick, whatever it takes to make 400 HP let's give it a shot we've done everything we can to get 400 horsepower but after seeing that intake manifold , hmm.. it looks impressive it looks like it might do the job I might get ten HP out of it .. here it is friday night everybody's gone home clients and all and now i'm curious i'm gonna remove this is intake manifold here tonight just to see what we got Nick's passion for power has kept him working late to plenty of times but he's also got plenty of good people who lend a hand tonight it's his brother George who stopped by after a day in the parts store and is ready to pitch in nick has been wrenching on engines with his brothers since before the ink was dry on his first driver's license he's got more room in his shop now than he did back in the basement of the family home but this is still what he loves doing best. This is really old school. this is backyard style with the key. no ratchet, no air tools, nothing. it's time consuming, but you know what, it still get's the job done. back in the early seventies, this is what we did. Pretty soon, Nick has got the aluminum intake off and his hunch would seem to be confirmed the runners are measurably larger on the original cast iron part. here we go, we will start with the edelbrock. it's a snug fit fits in pretty snug tight and now we're going to go to the cast iron and here we go we see almost an eighth of an inch that's on the width. let's try it over here same thing now let's go back to edelbrock here we go snug tight, snug tight. now let's try overall height here we go now go for the edelbrock, see that... Now, we go here again we have almost an eighth of a gap as you can see we might get our goal, ten HP. Might put us in the 400 range. It's promising, but Nick knows that there's lots more to getting horsepower than one quick measurement he's going to have to dyno test to see if his theory holds water so the next morning he's got Vasilis bolting on the freshly cleaned original cast iron intake manifold Nick wants me to put the holley carburetor on that intake, That intake was designed for a Rochester carburetor which has a square bore flange you see, the the bolt patterns are not the same it's a little bit off there so we're going to need an adapter it is the weekend, so everything is closed. we can't order one, but I know exactly where i can find one. so we can make the engine run today. this 72 cuda has got a late 440 in it now he can borrow the part he needs while this car is in the shop in order a new one on monday the 440s came with the spread bore intake and that's the adapter plate so we can put from spread bore to square bore. in the oldsmobile, so we can use our holley carburetor. that should work Nick doesn't like the apparent restriction this chunk of iron in the middle of the intake might cause but he's not willing to start carving up an original piece just yet so he leaves it as it is for the purposes of the test Here I am, I got the cast iron intake manifold installed and ready to make a test and i hope we make that 400 horsepower and then let's get started and see what we can do. Nick wants to make a few pulls, dial in the air-fuel ratio and find out what he's making with this setup we need to richen the carburetor. ok we're going to go up 2 jets. you want it in the 12s? Yeah, I want mid 12s, high 12's at full throttle. at 13.5 it's running too lean. Let's richen it out Vasilis, change the jets, go ahead. this olds 350 has seen a lot more testing than the average motor that Nick puts on his dyno... but he doesn't mind a bit. As long as I got the energy and my health, I could do it, and I will do it, forever why not, I enjoy this...This is what I love. between 12 and 12.9.. A little richer? go up... 2 jets, so it can go down in the middle. two more up, yeah. 12 and a half to 13... thats good. let's see what we got. did it change anything? 384 back there again. That motor is stuck at 384-385 it's not the result Nick was hoping for but this is why he keeps the dyno in his shop so you can do real tests and get real answers if this was his own motor, he'd keep trying but it belongs to a client and the client has already said that he's happy with the other set-up. here we are , we overlapped our two tests cast iron vs edelbrock. the dotted line is the edelbrock manifold. we did that before... vs that cast iron we put on today is a solid line so what you see here is that the edelbrock is the way to go the aftermarket intake does seem to be wider open up top and Nick would love to try modifying the original to see if he could get more air and fuel to the cylinders but it's the client who's calling the shots on this engine and this is as far as he wants to go... for now a few days later the 350 is still on the dyno this time with the edelbrock performer intake back on it's being started up for one more pull and there's quite the audience here to see and hear for themselves Nick's client Tony and three generations of his family are celebrating the rebirth of the motor for a car that means a lot to all of them that's the thing about what Nick does... he doesn't just build engines... he's building people's dreams and this dream isn't over yet you know Nick isn't going to be happy until he gets 400 horses out of the rocket v8 when he does you'll be along for the ride
