http://www.wickedpontiacs.8m.com/tips.html
"1. Set Total Timing to 36-40 Degrees BTDC
The lower the compression and shorter the stroke, the more timing is needed.
2. Recurve Distributor to get all of the timing in by 2500 rpm,
unless you have a heavy or poorly geared car, then it should be increased to 3000 rpm or more.
3. Get cold air induction (ram air), or at least open up the air cleaner to expose more filter surface area.
You can also flip the air cleaner lid upside down to increase power. ie (1970 GP)
4. Have a buddy check the throttle opening as you depress accelerator from inside. (engine off)
See if the throttle is opening fully when you mash the go pedal.
5. Open up the exhaust, bigger diameter pipe and ditching restrictive bends helps performance and economy.
Check the 180 degree bends above the axle, you could just eliminate this part of the exhaust and gain flow.
6. Install an exhaust crossover (preferrably X type, but H type is still better than nothing)
Don't forget to have dual exhausts if possible, and mandrel bent tubing.
Try to evacuate the exhaust gasses in a low pressure zone (high speed air), this will increase exhaust scavenging.
7. Headers are a good upgrade, but often leak and warp (my 69 birds turd 3 tube headers).
8. You can install mufflers in parallel to increase exhaust flow.
This means 2 mufflers per pipe, having a splitter before and after the parallel mufflers.
Some mufflers are loud (glass packs), but are still restrictive, find high flow units.
My knock off glass packs got the baffle treatment which hurts flow, if you run them in reverse,
you can smooth out the flow and decrease turbulence caused by the impeding metal pieces.
9. Install a 160 degree thermostat or something lower than you have.
Lower temperature = Denser Air Charge = More Power
10. Charge your battery before each run, this supplies more voltage for firing the plugs.
11. If your air conditioning doesn't work, get rid of the power-robbing belt.
12. Tune your carb,( rods and jets are available for performance), or you can hand modify QJet rods.
QJets are known for being on the lean side, don't "out of the box" the carb,
different applications have varying fuel requirements.
13. Electronic Ignition can gain you consistency and efficiency, power is not guaranteed.
14. Increase plug gap up to .50, if you have Electronic Ignition, very effective with Multiple Spark Setups.
15. If you have resistor type plug wires, they can degrade and add resistance over time, use copper core.
16. Still using points? Use a rotor that has a metal contact which extends out as close to the cap as possible
to the distributor cap contacts. (Jumping a huge gap there will hurt spark potential, losing a couple HP)
17. Most fuel pumps don't accommodate high horsepower setups, upgrade!!
Make sure that your pump can handle your set up, install a pressure gauge nearest to the carb
For a street combo 6 psi at all times is what to shoot for. (note: QJets can't take more than 6 psi)
18. Remove sock filter in gas tank, these can restrict flow and get plugged.
19. Ditch the in carb filter, use a good in line filter only, but don't go without! In carb filters are restrictive.
20. Get an adjustable vacuum modulator to adjust shift points on autos, very useful for throttle response,
and economy. 21. Timing chains stretch over time, get a good double roller or gear setup,
and use a 2-4 degree advancement keyway.(cheap)
22. Use traction bars, or on leaf springs at least clamp the leafs ahead of the axle.
23. Adjustable shocks are important to a good street strip car.
For racing, 90-10 in the front, 50-50 or 60-40 in the rear.
24. Subframe connectors help tighten up the car and improves times. (Don't lose power in chassis bending)
25. Worn out front shocks are good for launching at the strip.
26. Decrease unsprung weight, ie (tires, wheels, rotating masses)
If you have a strong TH350, use it in place of the much heavier TH400, I believe you save 50 unsprung lbs!
27. Decrease total weight, ie (crap in the trunk) 100 pounds = 0.1 seconds on the strip.
28. Use tall skinny front tires in front at the strip, the height gives you more room to take off.
Similar to shallow staging, which allows greater travel of the tire until you finally trip the beams.
29. Nail down a good alignment, otherwise you will go slow and not know why.(check tires for odd wear)
30. Make certain that no brakes are dragging either. (check for hot brakes
31. Synthetic oil decreases friction, which aid durability and performance.
32. Cut the wind, lowering the front of the car can improve aerodynamics, and thus better times.
Remove items such as: mirrors, antennas, wipers, when drag racing.
Don't lower the car too far, unless your car doesn't require much weight transfer.
33. Increase fuel line diameter to at least 3/8.
34. Keep fuel lines cool, insulate them from the exhaust and install a "cool can."
(or make with aluminum line and coffee can, aluminum dissipates heat faster than steel)
35. Move weight from front to rear. ie (battery)
36. Add shims to your distributor to keep timing consistency, by taking up as much slop as you can.
(when distributor is removed, add shims between the gear and the aluminum housing)
This causes irregular timing in Pertronix systems, and misalignment with dist cap.
37. Spoilers not only look cool, but help guide air around the car.
Front spoilers increase aerodynamics, but rear spoilers rarely help a street car on the strip.
38. Remove the front sway bar, this reduces weight and allows the front to rise and transfer weight.
You can also loosen the top nuts on front shocks until you run out of threads,
then put locktight on the threads and double nut. This also lets the front rise immediately
39. A lot of flash can be found in manifolds and headers, take the time to remove the excess metal.
All cast materials can be improved with careful filing of grinding, even a QJet.
40. Choose a cam to work with your setup, not the biggest bumpstick you can find.
Also coordinate cam with a torque converter that stalls in your approximate power band.
Generally if you are running 230 duration at .050 lift, change converters.
The heavier your Poncho, the more drastic stall speed your combination will need.
41. Adjust air valve opening on the QJet to eliminate bog, but open quickly.
Use a screwdriver to hold the adjustment while you loosen the hex underneath,
then finely adjust the position of the screwdriver to change opening tension. (You can feel it)
42. Use different secondary rod hangers and rods to fine tune your carb.
You can drill the hangers to have a two in one, rich and lean hanger.
The shorter the distance from the hole to the perpendicular top part,
the more responsive your secondary fuel metering will be.
43. When drag racing, turn off your ac, heater, and electrical devices.
44. Also close windows, and put up your convertible top.
45. Retain vacuum advance, it improves part throttle acceleration and economy, but does nothing at WOT.
46. Replace points often, they erode and decrease performance almost immediately with a hot coil.
47. Use a "hotter" coil, especially with electronic ignition.
(The hotter the spark, the more explosive the combustion)
48. If performance is paramount, block the exhaust heat crossover in the heads or intake.
Good luck with cool weather drivablility.
49. Use a carb spacer, open type improves high end scavenging and performance.
Some spacers also insulate the carb from heat, which increases density.
50. Ice the intake in between runs, and also douse the radiator.
51. Use plugs with a colder heat range for performance, some plugs are better than others.
52. Cut the ground electrode of a regular type spark plug to explose the Air fuel mixture to the flame kernel.
53. Pop up the back portion of the hood to allow hot pressurized air out of the engine compartment.
54. Some Pontiacs have Tranmission Controlled Spark, which only allows full vacuum advance in high gear.
I believe if you bypass this on 70-71, you get full advance, but 72+ it disables the vacuum advance.
55. Increase the duration of the spark to increase power.
56. Thermal coatings on piston and combustion chamber transfers more heat to power.
57. Perfect the air fuel mixture, theoretical ideal is 14.7:1 A/F. (go by plug color and feel for best power)
58. Give your high compression engine the octane that it needs, 9.5:1 is limit on pump gas. (93 octane)
Don't just go by factor specs for compression, they are often wrong, and sometimes they've been shaved,
You can use a cheap syringe to cc the heads, then add gasket volume, deck height, and piston insets.
59. Modify heads with 3 angle valve job.
The ideal angles are 75, 60, 30, 15 on the intake side, 75, 60, 45, 15 on the exhaust.
30 degree intake valves are better, try and make the total length of the 60 and 40 cuts 1/4 inch combined.
I would try to find some sweet D port head like 13, 16, 62.
I've found that you can get 69-70 GP heads cheap, because people think they aren't hipo.
60. Port your heads, but don't enlarge the ports unless you want to sacrifice low end torque.
Focus on restricted areas and bends, such as the short side radius, and the valve bowls.
61. Open combustion chamber preferred to a closed type.
Heads in the earlier sixties (67 gto) had closed type.
62. Blueprint everything, gasket matching to ports is important.
Align manifolds to the heads by marking centers, (top and sides) don't tighten until they align.
63. Smooth ports at the top of manifolds (intake/heads), and leave roughness at the bottom,
More air flows at the top, so this is the area to focus on for power output.(especially near carb)
Roughness improves economy and atomization when your car is cold.
64. Cam lift doesn't decrease economy and improves power,
Cam duration improves power more but poops on economy.
65. Stock Pontiac rocker arms are rarely 1.5 ratios, they are usually 1.47 or so, and not uniform.
This equates to a lower lift than anticpated.
66. Pontiacs need a higher duration number (by about 10) on the exhaust side.
This is due to the 130 degree bend, and the fact that the exhaust flows more efficiently at high lifts (.400+)
Whereas, the intakes flow great from .100-.300 lift.
67. Shoot for an average intake lift of about .450 to be optimal, higher, and you waste the low lift capabilites of the uniquely designed Pontiac cylinder heads. (Head work should focus on off the seat flow, it's no Chevy)
68. QJet secondary metering hangers can be more reponsive,
by sticking a straightened paperclip under the seat of it.
69. If you want better low end torque, consider recurving your distributor
to minimize the amount of centrifugal advance, low end torque on demand.
70. When searching for low end power, go with long runners, high end = short runners.
Carb spacers can lengthen runners for torque, especially closed ones.
71. Rather than tying off your choke to render it useless,
take the choke plate out, you will gain low end and total power.
(note: you may have to increase primary jet size slightly)"
"1. Set Total Timing to 36-40 Degrees BTDC
The lower the compression and shorter the stroke, the more timing is needed.
2. Recurve Distributor to get all of the timing in by 2500 rpm,
unless you have a heavy or poorly geared car, then it should be increased to 3000 rpm or more.
3. Get cold air induction (ram air), or at least open up the air cleaner to expose more filter surface area.
You can also flip the air cleaner lid upside down to increase power. ie (1970 GP)
4. Have a buddy check the throttle opening as you depress accelerator from inside. (engine off)
See if the throttle is opening fully when you mash the go pedal.
5. Open up the exhaust, bigger diameter pipe and ditching restrictive bends helps performance and economy.
Check the 180 degree bends above the axle, you could just eliminate this part of the exhaust and gain flow.
6. Install an exhaust crossover (preferrably X type, but H type is still better than nothing)
Don't forget to have dual exhausts if possible, and mandrel bent tubing.
Try to evacuate the exhaust gasses in a low pressure zone (high speed air), this will increase exhaust scavenging.
7. Headers are a good upgrade, but often leak and warp (my 69 birds turd 3 tube headers).
8. You can install mufflers in parallel to increase exhaust flow.
This means 2 mufflers per pipe, having a splitter before and after the parallel mufflers.
Some mufflers are loud (glass packs), but are still restrictive, find high flow units.
My knock off glass packs got the baffle treatment which hurts flow, if you run them in reverse,
you can smooth out the flow and decrease turbulence caused by the impeding metal pieces.
9. Install a 160 degree thermostat or something lower than you have.
Lower temperature = Denser Air Charge = More Power
10. Charge your battery before each run, this supplies more voltage for firing the plugs.
11. If your air conditioning doesn't work, get rid of the power-robbing belt.
12. Tune your carb,( rods and jets are available for performance), or you can hand modify QJet rods.
QJets are known for being on the lean side, don't "out of the box" the carb,
different applications have varying fuel requirements.
13. Electronic Ignition can gain you consistency and efficiency, power is not guaranteed.
14. Increase plug gap up to .50, if you have Electronic Ignition, very effective with Multiple Spark Setups.
15. If you have resistor type plug wires, they can degrade and add resistance over time, use copper core.
16. Still using points? Use a rotor that has a metal contact which extends out as close to the cap as possible
to the distributor cap contacts. (Jumping a huge gap there will hurt spark potential, losing a couple HP)
17. Most fuel pumps don't accommodate high horsepower setups, upgrade!!
Make sure that your pump can handle your set up, install a pressure gauge nearest to the carb
For a street combo 6 psi at all times is what to shoot for. (note: QJets can't take more than 6 psi)
18. Remove sock filter in gas tank, these can restrict flow and get plugged.
19. Ditch the in carb filter, use a good in line filter only, but don't go without! In carb filters are restrictive.
20. Get an adjustable vacuum modulator to adjust shift points on autos, very useful for throttle response,
and economy. 21. Timing chains stretch over time, get a good double roller or gear setup,
and use a 2-4 degree advancement keyway.(cheap)
22. Use traction bars, or on leaf springs at least clamp the leafs ahead of the axle.
23. Adjustable shocks are important to a good street strip car.
For racing, 90-10 in the front, 50-50 or 60-40 in the rear.
24. Subframe connectors help tighten up the car and improves times. (Don't lose power in chassis bending)
25. Worn out front shocks are good for launching at the strip.
26. Decrease unsprung weight, ie (tires, wheels, rotating masses)
If you have a strong TH350, use it in place of the much heavier TH400, I believe you save 50 unsprung lbs!
27. Decrease total weight, ie (crap in the trunk) 100 pounds = 0.1 seconds on the strip.
28. Use tall skinny front tires in front at the strip, the height gives you more room to take off.
Similar to shallow staging, which allows greater travel of the tire until you finally trip the beams.
29. Nail down a good alignment, otherwise you will go slow and not know why.(check tires for odd wear)
30. Make certain that no brakes are dragging either. (check for hot brakes
31. Synthetic oil decreases friction, which aid durability and performance.
32. Cut the wind, lowering the front of the car can improve aerodynamics, and thus better times.
Remove items such as: mirrors, antennas, wipers, when drag racing.
Don't lower the car too far, unless your car doesn't require much weight transfer.
33. Increase fuel line diameter to at least 3/8.
34. Keep fuel lines cool, insulate them from the exhaust and install a "cool can."
(or make with aluminum line and coffee can, aluminum dissipates heat faster than steel)
35. Move weight from front to rear. ie (battery)
36. Add shims to your distributor to keep timing consistency, by taking up as much slop as you can.
(when distributor is removed, add shims between the gear and the aluminum housing)
This causes irregular timing in Pertronix systems, and misalignment with dist cap.
37. Spoilers not only look cool, but help guide air around the car.
Front spoilers increase aerodynamics, but rear spoilers rarely help a street car on the strip.
38. Remove the front sway bar, this reduces weight and allows the front to rise and transfer weight.
You can also loosen the top nuts on front shocks until you run out of threads,
then put locktight on the threads and double nut. This also lets the front rise immediately
39. A lot of flash can be found in manifolds and headers, take the time to remove the excess metal.
All cast materials can be improved with careful filing of grinding, even a QJet.
40. Choose a cam to work with your setup, not the biggest bumpstick you can find.
Also coordinate cam with a torque converter that stalls in your approximate power band.
Generally if you are running 230 duration at .050 lift, change converters.
The heavier your Poncho, the more drastic stall speed your combination will need.
41. Adjust air valve opening on the QJet to eliminate bog, but open quickly.
Use a screwdriver to hold the adjustment while you loosen the hex underneath,
then finely adjust the position of the screwdriver to change opening tension. (You can feel it)
42. Use different secondary rod hangers and rods to fine tune your carb.
You can drill the hangers to have a two in one, rich and lean hanger.
The shorter the distance from the hole to the perpendicular top part,
the more responsive your secondary fuel metering will be.
43. When drag racing, turn off your ac, heater, and electrical devices.
44. Also close windows, and put up your convertible top.
45. Retain vacuum advance, it improves part throttle acceleration and economy, but does nothing at WOT.
46. Replace points often, they erode and decrease performance almost immediately with a hot coil.
47. Use a "hotter" coil, especially with electronic ignition.
(The hotter the spark, the more explosive the combustion)
48. If performance is paramount, block the exhaust heat crossover in the heads or intake.
Good luck with cool weather drivablility.
49. Use a carb spacer, open type improves high end scavenging and performance.
Some spacers also insulate the carb from heat, which increases density.
50. Ice the intake in between runs, and also douse the radiator.
51. Use plugs with a colder heat range for performance, some plugs are better than others.
52. Cut the ground electrode of a regular type spark plug to explose the Air fuel mixture to the flame kernel.
53. Pop up the back portion of the hood to allow hot pressurized air out of the engine compartment.
54. Some Pontiacs have Tranmission Controlled Spark, which only allows full vacuum advance in high gear.
I believe if you bypass this on 70-71, you get full advance, but 72+ it disables the vacuum advance.
55. Increase the duration of the spark to increase power.
56. Thermal coatings on piston and combustion chamber transfers more heat to power.
57. Perfect the air fuel mixture, theoretical ideal is 14.7:1 A/F. (go by plug color and feel for best power)
58. Give your high compression engine the octane that it needs, 9.5:1 is limit on pump gas. (93 octane)
Don't just go by factor specs for compression, they are often wrong, and sometimes they've been shaved,
You can use a cheap syringe to cc the heads, then add gasket volume, deck height, and piston insets.
59. Modify heads with 3 angle valve job.
The ideal angles are 75, 60, 30, 15 on the intake side, 75, 60, 45, 15 on the exhaust.
30 degree intake valves are better, try and make the total length of the 60 and 40 cuts 1/4 inch combined.
I would try to find some sweet D port head like 13, 16, 62.
I've found that you can get 69-70 GP heads cheap, because people think they aren't hipo.
60. Port your heads, but don't enlarge the ports unless you want to sacrifice low end torque.
Focus on restricted areas and bends, such as the short side radius, and the valve bowls.
61. Open combustion chamber preferred to a closed type.
Heads in the earlier sixties (67 gto) had closed type.
62. Blueprint everything, gasket matching to ports is important.
Align manifolds to the heads by marking centers, (top and sides) don't tighten until they align.
63. Smooth ports at the top of manifolds (intake/heads), and leave roughness at the bottom,
More air flows at the top, so this is the area to focus on for power output.(especially near carb)
Roughness improves economy and atomization when your car is cold.
64. Cam lift doesn't decrease economy and improves power,
Cam duration improves power more but poops on economy.
65. Stock Pontiac rocker arms are rarely 1.5 ratios, they are usually 1.47 or so, and not uniform.
This equates to a lower lift than anticpated.
66. Pontiacs need a higher duration number (by about 10) on the exhaust side.
This is due to the 130 degree bend, and the fact that the exhaust flows more efficiently at high lifts (.400+)
Whereas, the intakes flow great from .100-.300 lift.
67. Shoot for an average intake lift of about .450 to be optimal, higher, and you waste the low lift capabilites of the uniquely designed Pontiac cylinder heads. (Head work should focus on off the seat flow, it's no Chevy)
68. QJet secondary metering hangers can be more reponsive,
by sticking a straightened paperclip under the seat of it.
69. If you want better low end torque, consider recurving your distributor
to minimize the amount of centrifugal advance, low end torque on demand.
70. When searching for low end power, go with long runners, high end = short runners.
Carb spacers can lengthen runners for torque, especially closed ones.
71. Rather than tying off your choke to render it useless,
take the choke plate out, you will gain low end and total power.
(note: you may have to increase primary jet size slightly)"