Mert Littlefield once said to me, you got a 392? I though Mickey (Thompson) and I blew all those up at bonneville!
I love 92's. Heavy as a tank with the original intake mani and CI heads but once ya start swapping stuff with aluminium you can get the weight down.
And they make really good power and incredible torque, especially when the intake manifold pressure gauge goes into the positive region.
IMO they're actually a better endine than the 426 EXCEPT the cylinder spacing is so close ya can't go much more than .040" over on the bores, then it's time to re-sleave. Easy to stroke though.
I never dyno'd mine but a few people who are now legendary suggested it was at least 1100 hp on gas.
The trick is to put the biggest valves in there you can, I ended up with 2.125 intake and 1.70 exhaust IIRC, it was a long time ago. I know those numbers are close if not exact.
Polish the combustion chamber and ports, weld up the hot water runner to the intake mani and move the intake ports toward center and widen, and make raise the exhaust port roof as much as possible.
That takes a custom intake manifold and headers, but sometimes ya just gotta say what the heck.
That was really expensive but worked really well, until I go carried away with the pulleys and broke a rod and sent parts through the heads.
After that I just snagged a set of donovan heads. They worked almost as well out of the box and were actually a but cheaper in the long run (but unobtanium nowadays). Still had to make custom manifolds cause I couldn't find a donovan blower manifold at that time.
On the headers I just ghad custom flanges welded on.
Ignition was via Joe hunt vertex magneto, you would weld with that thing.
I had it up to 16 psi boost with .060" down on the deck, but the antique MT blower pistons didn't last long.
I finally settled on 10# to 12# and that worked pretty good.
If you're gonna make big power the 2 bolt mains need a little help. The bottom end is stout but changing to a 4 bolt or even a 6 both cross pattern with girdles would withstand a nuke detonation.
I had a custom oil pan made that wrapped under the starter with full baffles. I ditched the old style junk oil filter and used an aftermarket one from the 60's.
that engine cost me my credit rating and my girlfriend at the time,
but it was worth it
This picture shows the basset headers, but I only used them at the local lakes for tuning. At the riv and at races I ran zoomies you could toss a tennis ball through.
I remember one time he garage roof was smoldering after a really gnarly backfire.
Good times.