Just a quick comment in passsing.......the stock rubber intake, although not the greatest out there is not a large point of restriction. However, as said above, and I quote:
03MGT said:
every pony counts when going all motor.
There are dyno gains that can prove increased power across the power band with a good hi-flow aftermarket kit like the K&N FIPK or the JLT setup. Trinity_gt made 9.3 rwhp peak with his K&N FIPK setup on a stock head, stock cam, stock block GT, and I think the rest of his intake was stock as well. So, the gains would only be greater on a setup with internal modifications. It's not a "power mod" by any means, but when looking to squeeze every last power out of your setup as possible, you sometimes have to consider such things.
EDIT: I just now noticed something. In the list of his mods, I didn't see a cat-back exhuast mentioned in addition to his Bassani mid-lengths and Bassani x-pipe combo. The stock catback is VERY restrictive, and if I had to take a guess, that is probably one area where he's down about 6-8rwhp.
Another area could be in how the heads were ported. Who did the head porting ? Read the thread in the link he gave, and you will notice in his very first post he stipulated he ported the heads himself. Unless if he had a flowbench, there is no way of knowing whether are cylinders are flowing equally. This could be also why his numbers are some what low.
One other thing to remember is the cams he's using are a mid-range cam, and not an all out top end race grind cam. This could also be why his top end numbers are not higher than they are.
Considering all of this, I say his numbers seems to probably be in the normal ball park range.