[tmoss]

You absolutely need some gears - 4:10s I think, 3:73 minimum. I agree - compression is your friend.

The stock 5.0 makes excellent torque, but my opinion is it is not "optimized" as the lower half of the intake is quite restrictive. I port these lowers all the time and I have not had one SOTP or dyno or track test show anything but improvement over stock. Going with big heads and big runners shifts the torque curve out of the "lower" portion of the curve and shifts it higher. That's not a bad thing but it can hurt an auto if it's not set up right.

Just to illustrate my point, I am attacheing a dyno of my car which is totally stock except for removed air silencer, 13° timing, 2.5" Flowmaster catbacks, and a K&N filter with my ported lower as the only "major" mod. If you look at the torque curve, you'll see that torque is over 250# from 2,000 - 4,600 rpm. That makes for great street driving - especially in automatic cars with good gears.

Don't get hung up on peak power numbers. Look at average numbers over the usable power band of any combination. You'll be surprised at what you see sometimes.