[RichSchmidt]

No,never ran faster then mid 9's,but that was with raw motor gears (4.88's or 4.56's) and a 250 shot. I was almost on the 8000 rpm chip on the big end. I had a 400 hp kit on it,but never tuned it past 250. I would have needed 4.33's or 4.10's to step up past that. The cam at the time was a Crane flat tappet that nosed over at about 6900rpm on motor,and probably shouldnt have been going past about 6600 on the spray.

When I went 9.60's and 70's with the car I had a pair of bowl blended 990 iron heads on it that had a crack between 2 of the valves and lost the exhaust seal. I may have been running on 7 and a half cylinders then. I built the car to run NMCA/NSCA Easy Street which required iron heads,flat tappet cam,plate system,850 carb,8.5# per cube on stock suspention and 11.5" wide DOT tires. At 439 cubes I had to weigh about 3700#,I was 3650 when I ran on the nitrous back then. The combo was the wrong one,as the class highly favored small engines,and in particular small block Fords which worked better within the rules. When one of the small block Fords started running 8.50's it was just insane to think that even my car on a big kit running 8.80's would stand a chance. I decided that maybe drag radial class would be better and the rules were stock oem part number heads and block,3400# for big block,and a single plate system with #4 feed line. That class stepped up real fast,I think I could have done well,but there were issues with the rules. I decided to replace my heads with a set of GMPP L-88 replacement aluminum heads because they are the NHRA legal replacement head for the 074 factory head. My opinion is that they allowed 188 and 990 iron heads as replacement for the old factory installed rectangular iron heads,even though they never technically came on a production car,so why not the L-88 Version. I got an informal nod from one of the tech guys,but after buying and porting the heads,they decided that the heads I had were actually made for GM by Edelbrock,and were made of superior casting material and cores,and were therefore too superior to the original heads to be considered factory replacemnt. Their logic was right,but it still pissed me off. The heads were basically cast in the same molds as the Edelbrock Victor or RPM heads with just a GM part number,and were left rough cast so the ports were the same size as the factory L-88's. They have enough material to port out to the size of a monstor 375cc head just like the Edelbrocks,so since head porting was allowed,it these heads would allow me to port to way beyond what the original L-88 heads could go,vs what the 990 and 188 iron heads which truly could only be ported as far as the factory originals that they were replacing. I wasnt about to spend any money on crack prone 074 heads,or on iron heads that weighed a ton. I just threw in the towel,put a Dominator on the car,took the nitrous off and went electronics class bracket racing as a 10 second car.

Interesting fact,the aluminum heads hit the domes on my SRP pistons,and my SRP pistons are actually for a 496 but I am running them in a 439 with .250" longer rods,so the domes are a little too small for a 439 anyway,so I layed back the chambers in the heads and the compression dropped to 11.2:1. I blew the bottom end up after almost 700 runs with zero maintence(threw 2 H-beam Manley rods),and decided to reuse 6 of the pistons with a new block and crank and rods since the old combo ran so good,I tried a bigger flat tappet cam,and it wiped out before I got the engine broken in,so a friend of mine who raced and built engines for pro stock back in the early 70's had an old GM flat tappet cam from back then laying on the shelf,and gave it to me to try. It was a variation of the old L-88 cam with only .560" lift. I changed the oil and stabbed the new cam in and the car ran 10.49@128 on motor at 3425# with the stock GM cam and pump gas compression(I run race gas for consistency though). This combo is very mild,and is less radical then a real L-88. The engine is so mild mannered it is like driving an every day production car only it makes 600hp. I plan on milling the heads to get it to 12:1 and stabbing a little bigger cam in it with a tunnel ram and 2 660's when I drop it into the 2800# vintage pro stock 70 Camaro that I am restoring and figure that if it doesnt certify I will need to tune it down to run slower then 10.0.