MSO documentation

[bilede]

53.6 is a 396 but wouldn't tell you which of the 3 versions of that motor it would of been originally.. 325hp, 350hp, or 375hp or even L89 aluminum headed engine.. tach or other clues maybe.. keep looking.

[Chevy454]

We talking about the "taxable hp" rating? Seems like we dug into this many moons ago on this...

[COPO]

We did talk about this several years ago on this board. It is one method to help determine what displacement engine came originally in a car. I have seen a number of discrepancies with solely relying on this method. I found quite a few examples of highly documented BB's with a taxable HP listed as a small block. I think the old thread talked about the formula for this calculation. It is displacement only.

[Chevy454]

Here is the formula...

Diameter squared times number of cylinders divided by 2.5

[PhilS]

Thanks for the help guys but I'm curious about this formula. More than one displacement can have the same bore so I'm not sure how it works. Does the SAE number apply to more than one engine size? Also when I ran through the numbers I wasn't getting a match to the MSOs I've seen. I'm assuming that the number actually has relevance but maybe not.

[Belair62]

Phil my Y Camaro MSO states 53.6

[Mr70]

When I did a VIN search in 1995 on my car,the Missouri DMV sent me pages of 1970 Chevelle VIN's that were numbered around my cars VIN#.(They were pretty loose back then)
I was able to ID a few of the cars to their current owners today.
As was mentioned earlier,there were human errors when reporting these numbers,but they show my L-78 Chevelle as 51 taxable HP,an L-34 Chevelle as 48 taxable HP,and an LS-6 Chevelle as 54 taxable HP.