Ron's - Harry's FA/FB Looper
Ron,
First off, thanks to you and Ted for building a nice forum here.
Were the FA/FB engines from about the same time frame? I think the FA's of late '66/early '67 were pulling almost as much hp as the earlier FB's. The early loop engines had tons of lo-end torque, but hp rolled off rapidly. For our shop, it meant running 16:21 gears, swinging big wheels with big cups and chewing up lower units on a regular basis. In the AD (After Dyno) years, the peak hp began moving from 8400-8500 into the 92-9500 range. This made finding a decent 1:1 wheel much easier. I'm relying on a bad memory here, but I think in '72 the FA's pulled about 55hp and the FB's about 66hp on straight methanol.
We ran our own pistons, mainly because we were always looking at ring shape, ring pin location, dome configuration, clearance, and ring/cylinder fit. There may have been blanks from different sources, but the machining was usually done at QW.
Frank