What cam? What heads? What manifold?

[blykins]

Some very good points indeed, Rick...especially the point about the capability (or lack thereof) of a small displacement engine to suck in the volumetric amount of air that an intake can provide.

However, *most* guys who build engines for these cars are not building just putt-around-the-street engines...they're building performance engines....with higher duration and lift cams that push the powerbands up into the rpm range....3000 rpms is nothing for a small block and most engines don't have powerband peaks until the high 5 or 6k range. So to stay away from the RPM intake because it doesn't make power way down low doesn't make much sense to me....To take advantage of a high performance cylinder head such as an AFR or TrickFlow, you need a high performance cam anyway....which would necessitate a high performance intake manifold.

My opinion isn't worth much in a forum full of engine builders and drag racers....but it seems like if you want to make 400 hp out of a small cube engine and make it at a peak of 6000-6500....you wouldn't be worried about what you could do below 3000 revs.