Had my engine rebuilt not long ago. In a nutshell its a 302 w/ a 65 289 block, .040 over, balanced, 0 deck clearance, 10:1, edelbrock rpm alum. heads, .475/.500 lift cam, comp roller tip rockers, performer intake, 600cfm edelbrock, heddmen long tubes, flowmaster 40s. Shes just getting to 3,000 miles and has really loosened up since the rebuild. All this talk lately about hi-reving engines got me wondering what she is capable of. It seems the popular consensus about the edelbrock performer intake was nothing short of mediocracy, so I was curious if I would flatten out around 5,500rpm because thats what it's rated at.

Anyway, I recently hooked up my tach and felt ready to push her a little today. Getting on the freeway I started rippen through the gears and when I got to 3rd I just smashed the peddle and watched the tach climb, quick look in the sideview revealed nothing but emptiness behind me so I didnt let up.After 5,500 she was still pulling hard, thats when I thought of my77stang's misfortune and my pucker tightened up, but I was not going to let up yet. Looked up to make sure I was still within the road lines before looking back at the tach. 6,100rpm and still pullin hard The sound/pitch of the engine at that last 1k rpm was really awesome. A second later was at 6,200 and called it good.

Had one of the chit-eating smiles on my face all the way back to my exit. She never did flatten out. I sure she had a bit of pullin left, I just didnt want to push my luck with the engine being so new.

Anyway i'm sure for many of you 6,200rpm is childs play, but its the first engine ive had that was capable of it and wanted to toot my horn a bit

 

must be nice i think my tranny would blow

 

never hooked up a tach so I have not the foggiest idea what RPMs I'm going :-)

 

I have red lined my 03 Mach many times, and it is truly amazing how much horsepower is produced from 6-7K rpm. I would never even consider redlining Ol' Yeller. I don't have a tach on it, but I pretty much know by the seat of my pants when I am pushing it too hard, and I doubt if it is even close to 6K.

 

ya but i bet yeller would scream more than you think

 

Oh, I don't baby it. I definitely run it out in each gear until my ears and britches tell me to change gears before something breaks. I have always had the theory that engines perform better if the soot is blown out in every gear. I am not the old grandpa ****** that can't see over the steering wheel.

 

Yeah I wouldnt have tried it with the ol' C4 tranny I had, it was a leaky sob & was slippen a bit. The toploader in it now is about as new as the engine and I hear they are nearly bullet proof.

 

And to be honest kalli, I thought I could tell within a fairly close proximity how many rpms I was at just by listening to the engine. Turns out what I thought was about 5,500rpm was really only about 4,500rpm.

 

Yeah 4,500 is a pretty high rev for a basically stock 289. My seat of the britches ear tells me I am shifting at somewher between 3-4 grand. Now, we are talking about daily driving.

 

I hear ya Soaring, abit of intuition can save lots of $$$ on engine/trannyrepair. Thats about the same way ive gauged it most my life. Ive had 15-20 cars and I can only recall one other that had a working tach.