Love the analogy!  Thanks all for the input. - Garrett

Good point on headroom and the rear gear. That also brings to mind that modern cars have more transmission gears besides the electronics. 

Having read through Blair's "dueling 390's" posts, I'm intrigued by the high degree of OEM parts used for such stout builds.  I assume both of these engines would be very reliable street engines if kept below some threshold RPM.  That brings me to the subject question: given the relatively high horsepower of these builds using OEM block, crank, rods, and lifters, is it more the power or the RPM that limits the life of the OEM parts? 

The reason I ask is that I'm planning on supercharging a similar build (in parts only, not in skill!), not for racing but for purely street use in a '63 Galaxie with a C6 tranny and 3.00 gears.  Why go to the expense of supercharging without assembling a forged rotating assembly in a cross-bolted block of large displacement?  My answer is twofold: 1) cost, and 2) I'm not (yet) convinced it is necessary.  Regarding 1): adding a supercharger and heads is more cost effective for me (I work for Whipple Superchargers) than the cost of a new block alone.  Regarding 2): Whipple's bread and butter is supercharging bone stock modern muscle cars/trucks/SUV's (intercooled with ~8 psi boost for a 150% power increase), most of which do not have forged rotating assemblies, and we see nothing less than OEM reliability numbers.  I realize the FE is not a modern engine but I'll be going port injected and distributorless so I should be able to control AFR and timing to within safe limits.   

Using Blair's BBM-headed 390 build and Whipple's standard formula, I'd expect to see about 500 RWHP (my goal) at 4400 RPM.  That seems like a winner combo to me in terms of power and reliability for my street application.  Now all you folks with the real experience, please feel free to shred me to bits. - Garrett

Jay - Have you ever detailed out your distributorless ignition setup on the forum?  If not, I'd be interested to learn how you did it before and what you plan to change for this new mule.

Sorry to hear about your bad luck! Thanks for sharing your education with us, Jay.  I can't wait to read your upcoming posts to learn what happened. 

It's more flow restriction on the air side.  On the whole, you stand to gain more in terms of power, efficiency, and drivability from the individual cylinder control of port injection than the loss from air flow restriction.  That's on a boosted engine, of course.  I wouldn't presume that to be the case on NA engines.  That said, I have seen plenty of secondary "shower head" injectors on motorcycle engines.  Those are in the air flow path and could be considered a restriction. 

It must be an optical illusion.  The injectors on that manifold point right at the back of the valve stem. The dual injector on is shown in the red CAD image.  It's a lot of fun trying to make it all work!