[Petty886596]

Hello everyone this is my first real post after my introduction.First ill start with a little background on my project. I have an 1988 gt this was my first car and has been sitting for the past two years due to lifter failure the cam was really really worn too. Me and my grandfather rebuilt the car back when I was 14-15 so the rebuild would be about 8 years old and we did not replace the cam or lifters because I ran out of money.

I was drag racing while I was in high school and my uncle decided that it was a good idea to swap it over to a carb setup since it was speed density anyway...now im wishing i would have converted it over to mass air but, hey I was 18 and my uncle has an 11 sec mustang so I took his word for the gospel. so at this point this is how the car is setup 3.73 rear end gear rebuilt t-5 new clutch (stock) full lenght headers off road h pipe dumped at the axle

So at this point I have the motor torn down to a bare block.I know a decent amount about building engines but I do have alot of people that really know what they are doing to help me so I dont just really screw something up I'm still learning more and more about fuel injection everyday and my goal is to eventually go back to a mass air setup on the car (I currently have a complete harness and ecu from a 93 thunderbird not sure if im going to use it i still need to do more research and that topic is for another day unless someone on here knows for a fact it will or will not work but it was free anyways) but, to start I will be running a carb just for the fact that I have a bunch of carb stuff already and thats how the car is setup.

I have a set of gt-40 heads and intake I picked up from a pull-a-part on a half off sale day for 100$.I will be using the heads on this on this motor until I can buy some alumi heads.My goal for this car is to be a street/strip toy that has some unique features to the rest of the 5.0s around.I'm not the richest guy around by any means but I will not go the cheap route (been there dont that learned my lesson more than once )so money IS a factor but I know its not going to be a cheap build but if it goes over budget just means it will take longer to build I would like to try and keep the cost under $2500 (not including transmission alum. heads or efi setup thats for later)

Now for my questions

1. I'm wanting to build a high compression engine but I really don't want to run torco or race gas all the time. While I was searching the internet i found some people are running E85 in high compression and boosted engines and I realize there are alot of things that have to be upgraded fuel wise in order to run E85.I'm basically starting from scratch, so that does not really bother me.Do you guys have any info know of any build ups like this anything would help at this point im just trying to decide if this is really what I want to do.

2.How much power can stock rods crank and block handle and should I have the machine work redone? It was turned .010 .010 and All the bearings look really good and the cyl still have hone lines in them. and its a 8yr old rebuild but only has about 30,000 miles on it however they were pretty hard miles

3.Whats the best way to up compression? Im assuming just pop up pistons but I would rather not assume things lol

4.Would I want to have a cam ground for this specific application or is there one you guys suggest?

5.How do high compression engines respond to nitrous (im thinking less than 125 shot)

6.How much compression can I run with E85 and how much power can I expect from upping the compression? Im wanting to go at least 12:1

7.Is there a good company that makes parts to upgrade a t-5 to handle a decent amount of power I have rebuilt about 5 of them and Im not scared to tear into one

8.I really want to go this route due to the different factor but would I make more power with a 331? or go all out and build a 331 high compression engine?

9.Will an engine built like what Im talking about be very street friendly or a nightmare to keep tuned remember ill be running efi on it in the near future and I know ill have to take it and get it tuned.

10.How close do you think i am with my budget on this build (remember im just talking short block)

[horsepowerjunkie]

We switched over to E85 in my son's 87 Notch a couple years ago. It has a 12.5:1 427w, aprox. 575+ hp. All we did was send our carb to Pro Systems and they switched it over to E85. The car already had 1/2" feed & 3/8" return fuel lines. We went from a 140 gph pump to a 280 gph pump(ProSystems said 220 min.) for our application. Other than that we backed the timing off from 34 to 30. The engine runs very cool now. He has to leave the fan & water pump turned off until the engine gets up to al least 160 degrees(it takes longer than you think with E85). Around here E85 can be bought at the pump for about $2.00 a gallon, compaired to $7-$8 for race fuel. It made sense for us. If you leave the car sit for any period of time you should drain everything, carb, fuel pumps, tank, etc. We've had the needle's under the squirters stick several times after sitting.