Note that I can make it show 160 HP just as easily. A 2 barrel 300 cfm
carb
and stock low heads, cam and shorty headers are all it takes.

But Ron, you just described what V6 STOL owners **DO** use for the
engine. The 500 CFM two barrel carburetor was tried but was found
unsuitable for the engine because it's too much carb. If you use the
usual carburetor air flow formula which is: CFM = (engine size in
cubic inches) x (maximum RPM) / 3456.

I had a copy of Desktop Dyno for a while. (In other words, I forgot to look
for the installation disk after the latest HDD rebuild) And was dazzled by
the horsepower predictions for a number of engines--provided that you were
willing to run them hard and fast, use big pipes and a very big carb (or
throttle body), and also use a cam that was optomized for a fairly high rpm.
I really had my doudts about the engine pulling from idle; as I suspect that
a propeller load is vaguely similar to a torque converted. I also admit
that I am chicken and not willing to run a small-block continuously much
above about 4000 rpm, and would feel more comfortable around 3600 to 3800.
That, a conservative cam, a lower compression ratio, and a small enough
intake to idle smoothly would probably give me around 160 hp.