Originally Posted by Green95Z28

On my 68 camaro I drove around with 12.5:1 with 91 octane on the street quite regularly, I pulled the timing back the 33-34 degrees and it ran fine, it ran the times in my sig on 91 all motor, the reason I was able to do this was because it had a 268/270 degree at .050 solid flat tappet in it with a TON of overlap. (I am not saying you need that big of a cam to do it, but that is what I had and it worked for me) You might also want to consider the price of all the safety upgrades a car like yours will need, SFI dampner, SFI scatter shield, tranny blanket, when you start going that fast in the quarter you start nneding all kinds of different safety parts, and ANYTHING with an SFI tag on it costs quite a bit more than a stocker. Just something to consider. It doesn't sound like price is a huge concern so I would get ahold of a NHRA rulebook or head out to the local track and talk with a tech guy and replace anything you might NEED to before you order parts.

I am saying this next thing from personal experience... It might seem like a better idea to build the motor first, but if you do and you can't use it because every time you hit the throttle your pointed about 45 degrees off of what you should be it REALLY sucks. I mean its so lame to show up to the track with the baddest motor there and run 13s because your pouring smoke off your tires or bogging the CRAP outta your motor because you haven't done gears yet or better yet puke the guts outta the rear end on the first hit (been there done that). Its ALMOST always better to build the rear end and do the suspension and chassis work first that way when you get the motor in the car is already good to go. You might find that all your suspension, chassis and rear end work will get up there close to the price of the motor. But since you are building this motor out of necessity you don't really have a choice

Originally Posted by Kurt Crosbie

..... good idea. Then subframes would be nice too, and...