Picked up 40hp at same rpm with a cam change, was it losing valve control?

This is yet another TFS combo making great power without having to spin it too high, they really are impressive

They should try to race around 495 during rush hour….i bet they can’t beat some of the surly natives that use ever shoulder and merge lane as their own personal express lane. 

I had to use .060” (I think) gaskets from SCE to get my intake to line up, I liked that better than stacking gaskets. 

As for the distributor, I have the same issues with the drive pump.  I put a gob of bearing grease on the driveshaft, it’s thick enough that you can use a screwdriver to move the shaft into the center of the bore and the grease will hold it still until you can stab the distributor.  Usually takes a few tries, cold grease works better.

I think FE may mean “front engine” in this case, looks like it’s mounted out front versus the normal mounting for a centrifugal

Appreciate the feedback, I’ll look into it.  I killed at least one Bosch with very little use so can believe they’re suspect

Interesting a couple guys mentioned Fairlanes being bad.  My ‘66 (460/Toploader) will do it at a roll too, and if you throw a passenger in it gets worse.  Was thinking of clamping the front of the springs, it’s just a street car so wasn’t looking at CalTracs

Of course nobody has done a true AB test on this, but I have some data that may help with conclusions.  When I first got my Merc it had a good running 390 in it with Ebrock 600, Perfomer intake, Performer cam.  It got 15 with stock 3.00 gear and a COM

I swapped in another 390 with 224* cam, Performer RPM, 750 Holley, and a T10.  With 3.00s it got 15mpg. 

With 3.50s it got 14, 4.10s it got around 9mpg, and putting in a TKO it gets 17mpg.

So, in my combo of a fairly large ugly Merc, with similar 224* cam, it got decidedly better mileage dropping the rpm.  With extra 100ci with same size cam, can’t see how dropping rpm would cause it to lug to a point it’s losing mpg. 

I’ve had my car on a chassis dyno, it peaked at 3500 and 5400

The rods were in it so I didn’t rebalance, I know technically with new bolts and rings maybe it would need a balance but for this deal it’s going back together. 

I haven’t really looked at the intake yet, just been trying to get the long block together to this point.  I’ll have to study on it a bit, I’ll likely not try to match the floor of the heads since the LR ports are so low, just as one thought

Valves are 2.15/1.65 TFS takeouts, got a good deal on them and put them to use, if I knew they’d end up in a small bore I’d have gone smaller.  Side note, engine had a 427 head with 2.09s in it and one head with 2.03 standard head on it, was run that way as a racer back in the day.