C'mon guys.. different strokes and all that. There are some days when I take my boys down to the street racing scenes and local car shows and feel like I'm gonna puke if I see 1 more 347.. or 408.. or "this or that LS" conversion. I do like the little 6's and the thought of being different than all the cookie cutter builds is appealing to many folks, including myself. Although it's all been low budget OEM stuff, I've ground, drilled, machined, swapped parts around every which way but up(probably even tried that too in times of power desperation), and tuned em' right to the ragged edge of what the combo/fuel will allow. The simple fact is that the physical limitations of such small motors cannot very easily be circumvented. Street cars need more low rpm torque and comparing full on race cars spinning around at ultra high rpm is like comparing this OP's engine to an F1 powerplant. Not even remotely the same ballpark, or even located in the same state for that matter. As for all the cool looking induction and airflow tricks to stuff more mass into the engine?.. I love em'. But just like running dual quads on smaller/lower rpm street type motors.. all you end up doing is adding bling and affecting tuning complexity and moving the engines next biggest choke point to another location further down the induction pathway. Sometimes even affecting total power in negative fashion when other supporting modifications are not implemented in timely fashion. On the other hand, I guess you gotta start somewhere and some folks just like to put the cash where they can revisit it more often when they pop open the hood. To each his own.
Finding any Maverick/Comet is getting more expensive, an affordable V8 car is harder to find and outside many's budget. With the more available six' cars numbers many are found poorly maintained or not running. Original or improved performance and economy often is simple with the anvil like small block six' starting with optimizing tuning to upgrade modifications. I really would like at least one of each cylinder choice available ... Have fun
Excellent points you've made and like I said above.. to each his own. Like a lot of the guys around here and in this particular thread, I'm a lifelong power-crazed gearhead at heart and I usually boil thing right down to this simple philosophy. I would much much rather spend money to actually BE faster.. than spend that same amount of money, or more, to create the illusion that I.. COULD BE.. faster. One way is realistically achievable with much less cash outlay per horsepower.. and one way is just plain nostalgic. Adding some nostalgia and treading off the beaten path is pretty cool too though. I think Krazy nailed it in his above response. Look for a bigger/biggest single barrel and accept the fact that anything more than that will need many more modifications to bring added gain.
