Stromberg BIG97 dyno thrash

Norm Schenck at Competition Fuel Systems has been dyno testing Stromberg 97 and BIG97 carburetors for us for year. In fact he had a major hand in developing the BIG97 from scratch.

We set up a dedicated dyno motor at Norm’s facility in Vassar, Michigan and we’ve been watching intently as horsepower has grown with small tweaks to the carburetion and heads. This set up is with the cast iron vortec heads, that Norm ported himself. We have a set of AFR CNC ported heads waiting in the wings and they would probably make more power, but Norm suspects that the limitations of the Edelbrock tri-power intake would not have allowed for much more flow than was achieved with the vortec heads.

Want to know the numbers? This is a GM 330 horse crate motor and the best we got this time (by taking off the mufflers) was 404 ft-lbs of torque at 4300rpm and 386HP at 5400rpm. We still made over 400/380 with the mufflers on. This was on 89 octane gas with top end A/F ratios all in the 13s ! The dyno can now read separate A/F ratios per cylinder.

What this motor will do once someone (ie us) develops a new intake for the BIG97s is anyone’s guess. But it will be impressive, you can be sure of that…

Stromberg BIG97 Cadillac 331 gains 40hp

BIG97 3x2Watching a BIG97 equipped Cadillac 331inch race engine (out of an Allard) on the dyno is not something you want to miss. So off we went to Connaught Competition Engines in Kent, UK, to watch and help with jetting and tuning. The way the driver wanted to go was with three BIG97 Primary carbs for this engine, on a direct linkage. The old Edelbrock intake was opened up to take the bigger throttle bores. And the final results? Not bad for an old Cad motor!!

405lb ft torque at 3500rpm and over 350hp at around 5500rpm where these old intakes max out. Best of all, the BIG97 added some 40hp over the regular 97s, even with that old style early intake manifold. We didn’t even have to change the Primary stock jetting (0.56inch main jets). And there were no issues with residual fuel pressure on shutdown, either.

Big thanks to Phil at Connaught Competition Engines for driving the dyno, and Gus Gingell who built the engine.