Numbers Don't LieThe goal of this test was really twofold. The first was overall power, and the second was peak power. Often you'll find an engine that makes great peak power but is a little weak when it comes to the midrange torque curve. However, in this case the Chevy not only won the peak power contest but also made more overall power than the other engines. The Mopar did make a little more torque between 3,500 and 4,000, but that was the only place where the Bow Tie engine was challenged. As you can see from the charts, the small-block Mopar put up a great effort with peak numbers very similar to the Chevy's, but closer inspection of average torque reveals the Chevy made more than 14 lb-ft more torque than the Mopar and 30 lb-ft more average torque than the Ford engine. Unfortunately, the Ford was down compared to the other two engines, coming in over 50hp shy of the Chevy and the Mopar and around 30-lb-ft short on the torque side.
Take a DipIf you look at the graph of all three engines, you can see an interesting dip in the torque curve for both the Mopar and the Chevy. The Mopar hits the dip first between 3,000 and 3,300, while the Chevy sags between 3,500 and 4,000. These troughs in the power curve are common in engines with large amounts of camshaft overlap. As mentioned earlier, both the Mopar and Chevy engines used larger-duration cams with tight lobe separation angles that increase the amount of overlap (when both the intake and exhaust valves are open). This can cause higher pressures in the intake manifold that can reduce the signal to the carburetor and cut fuel flow. Increasing the fuel flow in this rpm area only often returns that lost power. This fuel-flow increase can be worth from 10 to 15 lb-ft of torque. This is of importance if you happen to be using a torque converter with a stall speed of 3,000 rpm, for example, as in the Mopar's case. With torque multiplication ratios in a converter of over 2:1, a loss of 25 lb-ft here is the equivalent of losing 50 lb-ft to the input shaft of the transmission.
ConclusionsWe can be assured of at least two things that will result from our first shot at Battle of the Titans. The first is that no self-respecting Ford guy is going to jump ship and build a Chevy just because the Ford engine didn't do well in our test. Does that mean all small-block Ford 351W engines are lame? Hardly. The second obvious result is that this Titans shootout will only feed the controversy over which engines are better. We don't claim to have any better handle on the crystal-ball routine than those phony Coney Island madams, and it looks like the Battle of the Titans has created as many questions as it answered. And if there are enough of you out there who'd like to see a pocket-porting rematch, we could be coerced into another round. Tell us what you think. Just keep the verbal abuse to a minimum.