Saint,
The NASCAR engine sounds like a good idea at first, all those expensive parts making all that horspower. And you can simulate exactly the same thing in a much cheaper engine with a great big solid lifter camshaft. My first cam had outragious specs and would make amazing horsepower as the revs got up to 5,000 rpm or better. I clocked a zero to 60 speed of 3.9.
However, in real life, taking the wife to lunch was uncomfortable with the low speed engine surges. Pulling away from a stop sign gracefully was impossible, it would stall sometimes if you didn't rev the engine and slip the clutch enough. The engine had no power at all below 4,000 rpm so you couldn't use fifth gear until you were up to 85 mph. I burned up a lot of gas crusing in fourth gear.
When I got tired of adjusting the lifters every few months I put a milder hydralic cam in it. This was better, but I still couldn't use 5th gear below 75 and the idle was still very ragged.
The next stage was Rhodes lifters. Now, that's the ticket! I got the idle down to 900 rpm. The engine will pull in 5th gear from 60 mph. I could achieve better than 20 mpg crusing on the freeway. I could run a constant speed without surging and whipping my Navigators head back and forth. And when we're late for a checkpoint, the revs go up and the power comes on. It's not the radical "he!!'s breaking loose" kind of power, but enough to fly by anything else on the road.
So, sure spend $20K on a radical engine. Then, when you get tired of it's impracticallity, let it sit in the garage and rust away like too many Cobras do.
Hal wrote a great article about this very subject a while back. You can read it here:
how much HP really is necessary.....
Paul
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