How to gain 36 wheel HP for $80..

Don't think it's possible? Read on....

We had our dyno day today. The only 510 in attendance was Morgan Smith's 3.8L Buick V6 powered 510 with Firebird 5-speed. The engine has a Kenny Bell camshaft and headers (Morgan, fill us in on the rest of the mods).

This motor is so unknown to me that I had NO CLUE on what number to even guesstimate! Me, "MR NUMBERS", no clue. I figure with 800cc displacement over my VG30DE, he should have at least equivalent torque (170ft-lbs). With it being an older OHV design, I figured anything between 120 and 180 wheel HP was possible.

We strap it down, hook it up and Morgan let's her rip....Um..the numbers look real screwy, but he gets four runs, so he runs it again....same numbers. They are:

98hp and 130ft-lbs of torque. WHAT??? 98HP? Dan Malm's STOCK Z22E (2.2L SOHC 4-cyl) made 92HP from 1.6L LESS displacement! Well, we couldn't believe these numbers, so "Magic" Dan Judy does 10 minutes of investigating, and checks some timing stuff, makes some changes, and they make two more runs. How much HP can you get from a TIMIMG adjustment? I figured 5 or 10HP maybe. Try THIRTY SIX HP! Torque was also up by 25ft-lbs. With ten minutes of dyno time he went from L22 power to VG30 power.

I was completely blown away. I was more ignorant than I ever thought. Turns out Morgan's car was not getting ANY timing advance. 17deg at idle, 17deg at 5000rpm.

The two "good" runs average to 132HPand 152ft-lbs. This puts him right in line with an EFI VG30E (3.0L SOHC) which on the same dyno gave 135hp and 158ft-lbs.
Pretty close, eh?

I imagine one wouldn't be able to tell the difference - here's the head to head 3.8L vs VG30E:

HP |  TQ
3.8L 132hp@5200rpm 152ft-lbs@3600rpm
VG30E 135hp@5200rpm 158ft-lbs@4000rpm

Damn, you'd think they're the same engine!

The moral of this story though, is...have you PROPERLY TUNED your engine
lately?
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In non-510 dyno runs, we ran a stock (except exhaust) '86 Corvette (rated 230hp stock). 202 wheel hp. We figure this car is making a 5-10hp over stock, although we have no other baseline Corvette numbers.

We also dyno'd a VQ35DE (2002 Maxima)(factory rated 255 crank hp): 183 wheel hp. WHAT? Well, I forgot to mention this Maxima is an automatic. How much does that matter? A LOT! The numbers guys might remember I dyno'd our 5-speed 2000 Maxima (VQ30DE ated 222 crank hp) and got 190 wheel HP. SCC dyno'd a 6-speed 2002 Maxima and got 218 wheel HP. Safe to say an automatic sucks a LOT of power - an additional 14% HP! Somehow I think there are VERY VERY few high performance 510's with automatics, so not really an issue for us.
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We had just three cars run today, but probably 10-12 spectators and the
great progress on Morgan's car. A success in my book!