Quick Sun n Fun review, Lakeland, FL 2022

... We must remember, the intake plumbing upstream of the throttle body, and exhaust are often made by the airframe manufacturer and include things like restrictive tiny airfilters, complex plumbing and quiet, restrictive exhausts. I like to joke about my plane being down on power, because it is. I put a tuned header on it, and the improvement was obvious. Lopresti was able to show a 7Kt gain in cruise speed with a ram-air setup.
Along those lines, Powerflow exhausts for the O-320 and O-360 produce noticeable gains in power and efficiency, if numerous pilot owner reports can be trusted.

A Mooney M20J that I rented a few times had a ram air knob in the panel. Pull it back and it opens an alternate direct air intake, bypassing the air filter. The POH said to use only in cruise flight in clean air. It didn't do much, increase in MP was barely detectable on the gauge.
 
Along those lines, Powerflow exhausts for the O-320 and O-360 produce noticeable gains in power and efficiency, if numerous pilot owner reports can be trusted.

A Mooney M20J that I rented a few times had a ram air knob in the panel. Pull it back and it opens an alternate direct air intake, bypassing the air filter. The POH said to use only in cruise flight in clean air. It didn't do much, increase in MP was barely detectable on the gauge.
The OEM Mooney air filter is much better than the Cardinal setup. 7Kts gain with ram air on a Cardinal RG.
 
I have the impression that the angle valve Lycoming 360 doesn't produce enough power gain to offset the weight gain over the parallel valve 360.
I have seen the engine shops modify the parallel valve 360's but haven't seen any angle valve engines hopped up?
 
I have the impression that the angle valve Lycoming 360 doesn't produce enough power gain to offset the weight gain over the parallel valve 360.
I have seen the engine shops modify the parallel valve 360's but haven't seen any angle valve engines hopped up?
We had a highly modified Angle Valve IO540 in our (red) Extra 300L aerobatic plane. It easily outperformed our (otherwise identical) non modified (yellow) Extra 300L. Like all Lycoming engines, the "angle valve" ones respond well to higher compression, bigger valves, higher lift camshafts, flow matched and ported cylinders. And at 340HP, I'm not sure a Parallel Valve of the same displacement can make as much power.

The modified engine was produced by BPE in Tulsa, OK. We loved it for it's rip-snorting attitude, and incredibly smooth performance.

But you are 100% correct, the parallel valve engine can, with just a few easy and inexpensive tweaks, match the Angle Valve's stock output. That's what makes them so great. Clean up the intake ports, on a parallel 540, add some 9.5 to 1 pistons and a tuned exhaust and an injected Parallel Valve will make 290 real-world HP, the same "real-world" as the 300HP IO540.

Something else of note, the Angle Valve engines have much more fin area. So the cylinders operate cooler.

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