[Formulajones]

Originally Posted by besserspat

Thats my opinion as well, i have a GN BRF 2004R sitting on a shelf, ill probably use it, put 3.31 rear gears in the 12 bolt, 28" tires.

Then refresh the 7.9CR 781 headed, 454 with a fuel miser HFT cam around 215-220 @ 050 and .530 ...Small diameter full lenght headers and top it off with a fine tuned Qjet and aggressive HEI timing advance and run it on paint brush cleaner 87 octane.

Its funny I get as excited to build a fuel miser engine as I am for a high performance build lol!

Peter

I think that engine combo you're thinking of will more than satisfy you on MPG. That's a nice mild 454 with plenty of torque.

Just to give you an idea, I had a 79 1 ton pickup with it's original 454. I pocket ported the heads, put a very mild 220 @ .050 Melling flat tappet cam in it, stock intake with some modifications, and the original Q jet. It was still very low compression (original pistons and heads) 400 turbo and 3.73 gears. That thing would get 14 mpg consistently, and weighed 5600 lbs. I'd just put it on 2800 rpm and cruise. Drove it across country a few times like that. It also towed wonderfully. An overdrive would have easily pushed it to upper teens for MPG, and that was the next step before I sold it.

I've never actually tried to build a fuel miser though, like you I'm more high performance minded, but have managed to get respectable mileage out of some of that stuff anyway.