Reply to "Building an economical 351C"

OK, maybe I should clear some things up a little. The original engine was a euro GTS. The part numbers indicated it was of 1970 manufacture. It had ungodly high compresion. I don't know how high it was, but I had to buy premium and a bottle of 104 and lead substitute for every half tank fill up or it would ping like a sonar in heat. The new long block I put in was cobra jet spec and it seems to run fine on regular. It seems to as long as the timing is ok, I just checked it yesterday and it was running at about 10 ATC and I have it at about 20 BTC now, so it was off by 30 degrees. I am going to drive it today and I will let you know if I deem it adequate. ;0
Now as far as calibrated asses, I have been driving for almost 40 years now. During that time I have owned a lot of cars, Mostly muscle cars and have done some drag racing. I have always known what the power ratings and the weight were for each of thos cars and have known what they where capable of and what they felt like during acceleration. So yeah, my behind has become an impromptu dyno. As long as I know approximate weight of a car and drive it, I can guess pretty good.
Now my neighbor is a professional race car driver. He is almost as old as I am. He has raced Fords his whole career and is real familiar with the Cleveland, even though now he races them modular engines. He examined my car, rode in it and pronounced bodly, "You are running just over 400 horses there." Myself I was thinking just under, but who am I to quibble.
I have also given a rides to other calibrated old dudes. They all tended to put it in the same ball park. One said "Damn, this feels like a big block. Are you sure it's a small block??" So I am fairly certain the estimate was in the ball park. She felt like a high tweleve, low thirteen car.
Now the new engine hasn't been around long enough for an extensive history of peer review like that. But I have driven it almost a thousand miles and already I am thinking maybe low to mid fourteens. Maybe after changing the timing I will change my mind. But I am betting I lost from 75 to 100 horsepower dropping the compresion ratio by about 4 points. That is what it feels like anyway.