[Keith Tedford]

I just speak from personal experiences, about 200K miles with the L72 and about 40K with L78 cars. In '68 I had a Ram Air Firebird with all the tricks of the day done to it. I have also had a '68 L35 Chevelle and a '69 GTO with the 350 hp 400. All fun cars. All with different characteristics. I think what I've seen is that the average muscle cars from the factory with the smaller ports worked better in the milder factory configurations. .500" lift and 240 degree duration was a fairly stout factory cam in the '60s. The factories couldn't go too crazy on wild cams and still have a 5-50 warranty. Look at drag strip performance figures (Stock and Super Stock) and things are a little different. Chevies tricked out for racing do very well as their full breathing capacity is being utilized. At one time 302s were running against 428 CJs in the same class. Our 455, while no race engine, works pretty well for such a mild combination. 230 degree .480 lift cam and headers. The port cross section is very similar to that of a 350 Chev. The L78 cars that I have/had wouldn't even come close to our old L72 in stock form. The 31 extra cubic inches don't, in themselves, account for all the difference in power although they do create quite a bit more toque as well as horsepower. The combination just seems to work quite a bit better with the extra air flow. Don't throw your L78 stuff away though. A friend's L78 Chevelle, with lots of tricks, runs 11.70s and the car is very streetable. Chevies do have more potential than most.