Edelbrock VS Iron – Rocket 350 on the Dyno!

Nick and Vasilis chase 400 horsepower out of a freshly built Oldsmobile Rocket 350, comparing an Edelbrock intake against the factory cast iron piece on the dyno. Years later, viewers are still asking whether they actually hit the number — and debating whether a restrictive carburetor adapter plate held the engine back. Watch the full pull, then see what the comments say really happened.

Chasing a round number on a dyno sheet can turn into its own kind of obsession, and that is exactly what happened when Nick and Vasilis set out to see what their freshly built Oldsmobile Rocket 350 could actually produce. The number they were chasing was 400 horsepower, a genuine milestone for a small block this size running factory-style induction. Whether they actually got there, and what one commenter years later still wanted to know about the outcome, says a lot about how a single dyno pull can turn into a debate that outlives the video itself, still generating questions long after it first went online.

Two Intake Manifolds, One Engine

The core of this test is a direct comparison between an aftermarket Edelbrock intake manifold and the original cast iron factory piece, bolted onto the same freshly assembled Oldsmobile Rocket 350 for a back-to-back dyno comparison. That kind of controlled, apples-to-apples test is harder to find than it sounds, since most engine builders swap parts between different engines or different dyno sessions entirely rather than isolating one single variable. Running both manifolds on the identical short block, with identical heads and identical carburetion, gives Nick and Vasilis a genuinely useful answer about how much a simple manifold swap alone is worth on this specific combination.

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Why Viewers Still Ask If They Hit 400

Years after this video first went up, at least one commenter returned specifically to ask whether Nick ever actually reached the 400 horsepower goal the video sets out chasing from the opening minute. That lingering question says something important about how these dyno videos get watched: viewers do not just tune in for the noise and the number climbing on screen, they remember the specific target being chased and come back later wanting closure on whether it was ever hit, sometimes years after the original upload, treating an old video almost like an ongoing story with its final chapter still technically pending.

The Adapter Plate Nobody Expected to Matter

One of the most technically detailed comments on the video points to a specific culprit limiting output: the adapter plate used to fit certain carburetors onto this intake setup in the first place. According to that commenter, the same adapter was known as a dud back in the 1980s, originally designed to let builders bolt on an easier-to-tune Holley carburetor in place of a factory Quadrajet, but at the cost of choking off airflow between the carburetor and the intake manifold itself. Their conclusion is blunt: a properly tuned Quadrajet will out-power a Holley running through that restrictive adapter, a detail plenty of builders in this era never fully worked out for themselves at the time.

Why Quadrajets Have Quiet Defenders

The factory Rochester Quadrajet carburetor has a reputation in some circles as difficult to tune correctly, which pushed plenty of owners toward simpler aftermarket carburetors like the Holley over the decades that followed. But one commenter who experimented with both setups on their own 350 Oldsmobile Cutlass years ago, using nothing more than a seat-of-the-pants dyno, came away convinced the Quadrajet was the better performer once properly dialed in. That kind of firsthand, back-to-back experience carries real weight in a hobby where plenty of received wisdom about carburetors gets repeated online without anyone actually testing both options directly against each other under real conditions.

A Small Detail That Might Unlock More Power

Beyond the intake manifold and carburetor discussion, one viewer offered a specific tuning suggestion of their own: shaving down the intake’s plenum divider plate would likely free up additional horsepower, possibly enough to help close the gap toward that 400 horsepower target the whole video is built around. It is the kind of granular, hands-on suggestion that shows up regularly in the comments on Nick’s Garage videos, where the audience skews heavily toward people who have actually built engines themselves rather than simply watched other people build them, and are happy to offer a specific fix rather than a vague compliment.

A Build Rooted in Real Racing History

One commenter shared a direct personal connection to this same engine family, recalling a high school friend’s 1970 Cutlass with a 350 and a four-speed, built in a shop connected to none other than A.J. Foyt’s own crew chief, and known specifically as a high-revving combination even by the standards of the era. That kind of pedigree connects this dyno pull to a broader tradition of serious, race-informed Oldsmobile engine building that rarely gets the same attention as small block Chevy or Mopar big block content, despite a genuinely dedicated following of its own among people who grew up around these specific engines.

Why Enthusiasts Trust Nick With Their Own Engines

More than one commenter framed this video less around the specific horsepower number and more around who was doing the work. One viewer put it plainly: if you are going to build a motor, this is exactly the kind of guy you want handling it, old school and backed by decades of hands-on experience that, in their words, simply cannot be taught in a classroom. Another described staying up late just to swap an intake manifold purely out of curiosity about the result, the kind of behavior that only makes sense if you genuinely love the process and not just the final dyno number on the screen.

One comment captured why Nick’s Garage keeps finding an audience for videos like this one well after they were first uploaded: a viewer who said they had never seen this particular episode before could still tell that Nick’s passion for the work looked just as strong, maybe stronger, as it did years earlier. For a channel built around real engine building rather than scripted entertainment, that consistency across years of uploads is exactly what keeps bringing new viewers back to older dyno pulls like this Rocket 350 comparison, long after the original 400 horsepower question was first asked on camera by Nick himself.

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