350 motor has no power

Jun 13, 2006 3 Replies

I have a 66 belair. I put in a fresh rebuilt 68' 350 chevy motor with



410 hp. I got it all hooked up, and i have a problem when i try to accelarate, it feels similar to the power of my old original 283 motor. It literally feels like im getting maybe 150ish hp. When i push the pedal down, the car's power curve will increase slowly, even when i jam the pedal down further, the car just slowly steadily increases in speed at a slow rate.( 0 - 60mph in about 11 seconds). When i hit WOT, the secondaries kick in, and i get nothing except a very slight chug, as if it went lean for a split second. Im using an edelbrock 800 cfm thunder series carb. an edelbrock performance fuel pump (preset at 6psi), hooker headers, i have an HEI distributor with bosh platinum plugs gapped at .45, and 8mm wires. Ive only done the inital timing and it is set at 10 degrees BTDC (with the vacuum canister plugged). I havent determined my total timing yet, but the car seems to advanced quickly when i pulled the carb throttle linkage back, while holding a timining light on the timing mark I have a 2500 stall, and a cam with a 485 lift and around 287/287 duration. So the car likes to idle high, about
900 - 1100 rpms... But basically.... The motor sounds strong at idle, and sounds strong when im driving it. Just no power and poor accelaration. I should be feeling at least 200 more horses. this is my first motor swap, so im a newb. any ideas? thanks for any help or info you can give. ~Scotty

Snuffy's advice is good in deed. Also, check your dist. wiring. I've found a good way is to pull all wires (and maybe even the dist.) and start from scratch, using good instructions. Saw a new motor home come wired as the old timers called "firing off #8". Ran smoothly from SC to Fla and back--all w/o power. Chev d'ship missed the prob which was caught by a shadetree racer-mechanic. HTH, s

Hey thanks for the ideas everyone, and right now my Rear end ratio is

3.08 gears.

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