The search for the missing millions.

Well Ive been still thinking about where my percieved power loss is. In theory I should have gone from around 240rwkw to around 300rwkw from heads and cam change. Thats like 100bhp increase. However to me it only felt like maybe half that.

I reread this article here and set off to Simpson Race Exhausts in Berkshire. I had previously noted a smaller section of pipe going from the headers into the cats. They were excellent, do great work at a reasonable price and were very helpful.

Well Im booked in there next week for the bypass pipes. Looking at this pic below from popular hotrodding, noted in the link above. I can calculate my current bhp per cfm at 1.44 (500fwhp) Shocking, as its right off the left hand side of the page! Perhaps somewhere around 70% of Max. Stock it would have been around 1.6 (430fwhp) so thats bad enough, but maybe only 10% down 30% is not acceptable.
So without getting too excited I believe I can say Im definately going to pick a good bit of power up with the exhaust upgrade. It should also definately allow a little more timing, or at least reduce the propensity to knock.

On a more serious topic, Ive been starting to have unclean thoughts about 402 and/or 382 strokers, bad and evil thoughts. I think if I get another 50bhp from the exhaust I should be fine keeping these evil ideas away for a while.