Rebuild for medium power

Great question and we have a video series on this. I will link it below.

However, this is probably the most highly debated question when it comes to engine building. You have two groups mostly. The bolt on crowd and then the engine builders who say you need to upgrade everything inside the engine to achieve the HP that you are looking for.

Both are right and wrong as it depends on your specific situation.

The one you listed which is a modest HP gain of around 100-125 HP but on a lower budget but keeping the stock look.

To me this means you don't want to add nitrous or a turbo, so that means we need to alter the parts that you are using when you rebuild the engine.

I would suggest you put your money into one main component on this engine and that is the heads. Then you can match the smaller components like cam, carb, ignition system to the increased air flow.

If you put a high flow set of heads on this engine, then you will get a ton of HP. However, keep in mind HP is generated by the amount of fuel you are able to burn so everything you do should be in an effort to get more fuel into the engine. You cannot jump dump fuel in because you need to maintain the 14.7:1 air to fuel ration. You can alter this slightly but if you upgrade the heads and get more air flowing through the engine then that means you can now add more fuel to it which is where the HP comes from.

Ryan has created a video series on what he did when he rebuilt a 302 and he normally sticks to a budget as well since most of his builds are not sponsored, which means he had to buy all the parts he chose to use. If they are sponsored, he will tell you in the video.

https://youtu.be/iiONenN_MxI

Please follow this link to the first video and let us know if you have other questions. If you do, you can post a comment on the video or just respond here, and I can get Ryan to answer questions that you have as well.

Thanks

Yeah. You would have to alter all of that however, it is very easy. There are many companies that make a chip or even a different computer that will address this and they are not that expensive.

So, if you are rebuilding the engine then I would still go this route. If you were not rebuilding the engine, then we could look at the bolt on items, but they would not take you from 200 to 300 HP.

Basically, you are going to have to spend some money in order to increase a little over 100 HP, but it can be done. However, I would not go any other route than heads, cam, injectors (as it appears this year was fuel injected), ignition system upgrade, exhaust, and PCM upgrade.

This will all cost a couple thousand dollars (most likely), but you will be up to around 350 HP depending on which parts you selected.