I had a buddy with access to a dyno free...
On my 87, I put in a 400sb and kept the tbi setup.
I didn't want to spend money on a TB spacer so I made one out of oak. It has good insulating properties, I made it about an inch tall. I laid out a gasket on the wood and marked it and cut it to match. I had no problems out of it in 50k miles. The dyno showed a 3hp @around 4000rpm increase, and a 10ft-lb increase at around 2000rpm. I also made an injector spacer from a 1/4 inch piece of teflon my dad brought home again copying the gasket. It adds space between the injector pods and the tb. It showed an increase around 3hp around 4k or so rpm and maybe 1-2 hp at 4500rpm or so. Like above ^ a simple addition would be electric fans. Some of them can suck 10-15hp from the engine. Dual exhaust helps more the higher your rpms, as long as the pipes aren't too big (scavenging) and adding an X or H pipe really helps low-end torque. Find out what rear-gears you have. Higher numerically will give better acceleration but less fuel mileage. A good middle of the road is a 3.73 gear. Add a cold air duct to the carb to get fresh air, instead of open elements like this,
Just a duct to anywhere outside the engine bay, to get fresh cooler air. If your AC doesn't work, take the belt off it. Advance your timing until you hear light pinging, and then just back off it about a degree or two from where the pinging at all engine speeds has stopped. Use low friction grease in your wheel bearings, and in other greasable things. If you want to use it, Synthetic oil wears less then conventional, so it must take less power to work. (be wary though, if your engine has more than 30-40k miles on it, it synthetic may make your seals leak like a sieve. Don't get a high-volume oil pump, they take more power however miniscule. to get better mileage open up the sparkplug gaps .010 (at the expense of mileage) if I think of anything else, I'll add it... Good luck!
1
