417 Donovan drag engine

[ledragster]

I have an old dragster that has a 417 Donovan , with aluminum Donovan heads. It has a 10/71 blower and was run on alcohol , hilborn injection. It was supposed to have 1300 - 1400 horse. It was running 7.20's in the 1/4 mile. What I would like to know is if I could underdrive the blower to get about 6-8 lb's of boost , put a little milder cam in it and run it on racing gas. I would like to put a cooling system on it and an automatic behind it. If I could run 8.5 - 9.5 second 1/4 mile that would be fine. Am I wasting my time or would this combination work okay ?

[challengerman]

Let's see; Major cool! Speaking of which, do you have the wet heads? Myself I'd be tempted to re-cert the rail & go to the Nostalgias. Got any pictures of this ride?

[392heminut]

You really need to know what the actual compression ratio is in the engine. I believe that blown alcohol engines run a fairly high compression ratio before the boost is even figured in.

[ledragster]

I am going to have to figure out the compression ratio. I was thinking that whatever it is I could adjust the blower boost to get an effective comp ratio of 12.5 - 13.5 : 1 . It looks like the heads are "wet" , I'm not sure about the block. From what I've read , those blocks came either full water jacket , half , or filled. I guess if it is filled it probably would not be a good idea to just cool just the heads only ??