Going back into the mists of time...well, 1982 or so anyway...a guy here in town had a yellow XD Falcon with a 351 and top loader. The car looked sweet and he sent off the engine to a builder in Brisbane to get it "fully worked".
Back it came, costing $5000...now, this was 1982 remember...I had a pretty decent job and was taking home $180 a week and was paying off a 4 year old Commodore for $50 a week, so $5000 was an astronomical sum for just an engine build. the plan was that it would be the hottest and fastest thing in town, and we all believed him when we heard the specs.
Anyway, when he got it back and fitted in the car and he came up the street to show it off, we all marvelled at the engine...chrome everything, HUGE 4 barrel Holley, something like a 750 or 850 double pumper, and nice extractors. The engine was painted and detailed to within an inch of it's life, and reportedly had full-house heads, a wild cam, high compression pistons, roller rockers, steel crank, high volume oil pump, everything balanced, the full works, and should be putting out up near 500 horsepower...again, a truly astronomical figure in 1982 for a street car.
The thing was...it didn't sound all that good. Oh sure, it had a rumpety-rumpety idle, but he was kinda puzzled that it didn't seem to be freeing up like he imagined it would, and was using VAST amounts of fuel and was hard to start on cool mornings.
After putting up with it for a couple of months, hoping it would bed in and come right, he took it to a local engine shop, and after a check over the decided to lift the heads to see if something wasn't right or had come adrift. They found, to his surprise, that it was basically a stock standard rebuit engine with the standard original (and still carbon filled) heads (with, need I add, no roller rockers...), and it had simply been fitted with a massive lump of a cam with the huge Holley dumped on top...the damn thing had no hope of firing that mixture with that huge cam and standard compression and small valve heads.
Needless to say, he was slightly miffed and I heard he had a spirited discussion with the guys in Brisbane that "built" it for him...:yeah: :bang: