When i floor the accelerator trying to over take in my 69 442 stock 400ci olds at around 30 to 40mph, the tranny will drop back to 2nd and rev its t##ts off, which i guess is normal. The problem is that i get very little increase in speed or torque until it moves up a gear to 3rd. I have had the carby rebuilt recently and was wondering if maybe it wasn't set up right. I'm sure that before it was rebuilt that i got a decent power surge when it dropped back into 2nd. It seems that it drops back to early. I hope you guys can understand my explanation of the problem that i'm having and maybe give me some advice as to what might be causing this to occur. Maybe its normal, i don't know. I just thought that with the supposed 350 ponies that it would have a little more get up and go. At the moment its doesn't seem to have any more performance than a 6 cyl toyota camry.
Thanks for any advice you might be able to share.

 

Make sure your choke is completely off when it reaches operating temp and your secondaries are opening up all the way in your 4 barrel.

 

I had the same engine, w/a 3:42 gear, through.
You could have a few issues - timing, advance, secondary opening and/or jetting.
I know there's still a few true 'speed shops' on the left coast, and some that do 'dyno tuning' which woud be your best bet.
Optimizing everything in a driving situation, [dyno] shoud be well worth it!
With mine, I was getting 16 MPG, and beat another '69 w/a 455, which he said was running high 13's!
But that was in the early '80's, when you could still get premium leaded, if you searched hard!

 

Thanks for the info. Sounds like i might get a dyno done.
Hey Rickman, that sounds impressive beating a 455. Was that with a stock engine?

 

100% pure stock!
Bought a rebuilt carb for it, [primary throttle shaft worn out!] and changed it on the side of the store. Found the secondary metering rod cam was broke, and freaked everyone out when I changed it right there!!
After changing the valve springs, rockers, stands and seals, it'd pull 23" of vacuum @ idle, too. Only 118k miles.
Picked it up at a used car lot in Chicago for $500 in '80!
One owner, a dentist from Oak Park, typical rust, club coupe w/blue tri-tone buckets and air, 68k miles.
Another I should have kept!