So.... how fast have you driven on the street?

[VintageMusclecar]

Some time in the late 1980's if memory serves me;

My street toy at the time was a 1975 Monza hatchback. Under the hood was an 11-1 355 with an Erson 320HLM solid lifter cam (250°/250° @ .050", 320°/320° adv. .534"/.534" lift on a 108° LSA), a pair of 370 casting double hump heads, and old style Edelbrock Torker intake (looked a lot like the Scorpion) and a 780 Holley and a pair of Hooker headers.

Behind this was a Turbo 350 with a Vega converter and a stock 7.5" rear end with a posi and 2.91 gears. Don't let the gearing # throw you off, the tires on the car were only 24" tall (13" rims after all). For reference--it turned ~2500 RPM @ 60 mph.

I beat that thing like I hated it--turned it 7500+ rpm on a daily basis and topped 8K on the Sun Super Tach II on more than one occasion. [img]<<GRAEMLIN_URL>>/naughty.gif[/img]

One night a friend and I were coming back from &quot;cruising the circle&quot; in Greenville, which was a town about 30 miles North of me. Access to Greenville was via a State route which is straight as piss and has several lengthy sections with nothing but fields on either side. You should get where I'm going with this...

Long story short, I turned the car loose and let it eat. The car had a 120 mph speedometer which was buried well before I lifted...(I don't know who GM was trying to kid with that--the OE 262 in the car was lucky to keep up with traffic! [img]<<GRAEMLIN_URL>>/rolleyes.gif[/img] ) When I lifted, the tach was just nosing past 6800 RPM and was still rapidly climbing.

MPH X rear gear X 336 / tire height = rpm

155 MPH X 2.91 X 336 / 24&quot; = 6314 RPM

160 MPH X 2.91 X 336 / 24&quot; = 6518 rpm.

Taking into account the slip of that Vega converter, I'd say that was somewhere in the ballpark.

Good times...very, very good times.