[RocktimusPryme]

Originally Posted by steve25

Many of the better builds strive to get the piston out of the hole by .005” to .008”.
This helps the motor to use the fuel that just goes unused sitting in that piston to wall gap .

First of all to be clear, I think this thread subject is awesome. I love the info, so I dont want to be seen as being critical here.

Im not debating that at all that having the piston slightly out of the hole is the correct thing to do. I just mean we are mostly looking at this and marveling at the power this is making relative to how most of us view late 1970s powerplants. But to be fair, even though this build is pretty faithful, wouldnt a factory motor likely have slugs stuck down in the hole? Meaning that their already low advertised compression is even lower?

I just wonder how much more power this is making than if we had a legit NOS W72 laying around to dyno. Which I realize is asking a lot.

I did like the nugget that if you simply turned up the timing on some of these smog motors they would wake up. I didnt live through the era so my speed secrets are mostly based on non factory builds.