Reply to "Strip Dominator on stock displacement engine"

> Is anyone running strip dominator on stock displacement, stock compression
> engine with mild cam? How do you like the part throttle behavior? Tip in
> response?

Tim Tullio got pretty serious about intakes and did a bunch of road and
drag strip intake testing with his Pantera. The engine consisted of an
Erson hydraulic flat tappet cam (232 deg duration @ 0.050", 108 LSA,
0.545" lift), Rhoads lifters, 4V quench heads, flat top pistons, 735
Holley, coatings, C&A rings, MSD ignition, wrapped headers, and MPG
Stinger exhaust port stuffers. Intakes tested included an Edelbrock
Torker, Weiand Xcelerator 4V, Offy Port-o-Sonic 4V, Holley Strip Dominator,
along with a couple dual planes. Tim spent a lot of time optimizing the
carb for each intake. Tim reported the Holley Strip Dominator was 4 tenths
quicker in the 1/4 mile than the Torker and had, by far, the best driveability
(smooth with no flat spots) of the single planes. He said it rivaled
the dual planes down low, as far as driveability was concerned, and by
3000 RPM was pulling away. Unfortunately, he didn't have access to a
Blue Thunder high rise dual plane for those tests. Also, the Edelbrock
Performer RPM Air Gap was not yet out, nor was the TFS single plane.
Tim said he was unable to get some of the other single plane intakes
(like the Torker) to smooth out at lower RPM, despite a lot of tuning time.

In my street 351C dyno testing, the area under the curve for the Edelbrock
Performer RPM Air Gap and the Holley Strip Dominator were fairly similar.
Shifted accordingly, the acceleration the intakes provide would be
similar but the manner in which they provide it would be different.
The Holley would pull harder at higher revs and the Edelbrock at lower.
It's pretty much a matter of preference. Some people like an engine that
pulls hard in the lower revs, others like a power delivery that rises with
rising RPM.

One possible discriminator carb heat. The air gap intakes (single or dual
plane) don't provide for carb heat but the Blue Thunder dual plane does.
Out-of-the-box, the Blue Thunder didn't do so well but with some flow bench
work to bring the 4 bad runners up to match the four good runners, the
Blue Thunder works very well. With aluminum aftermarket heads, carb heat
isn't an option so wouldn't be a discriminator.

One area of testing I'd like to pursue is smaller port single planes
(Holley Street Dominator, Weiand Xcelerator 2V, TFS, Parker Funnleweb)
on 4V heads. I've not run any of those on the street but experience on
other engines suggest that a good small port single plane intake can work
very well on the street.

Dan Jones