Why you've never seen it
A V8 fires four times every turn of the crank. At 2,000 rpm, about highway cruising, that's 133 fires a second, and each burn is over in about 6 ms.
Your eye stops seeing separate flashes somewhere around 50 or 60 a second. That's why a movie at 24 frames looks like motion. So all you ever get is a hum and a blur.
Slow time down and it opens up.
Four strokes, two turns
Intake — piston drops, intake valve open. Fresh air and fuel get pulled in.
Compression — both valves shut. The piston squeezes the mix to about a ninth of its size.
Power — the plug sparks just before the top. The burn slams the piston down. Only this stroke makes power.
Exhaust — exhaust valve opens and the piston shoves the burnt gas out the pipes and through the wall.
1-8-4-3-6-5-7-2
Odd cylinders sit on the driver's side, even on the passenger side. A cylinder fires every 90° of crank rotation, so all eight fire once every two turns.
Look at the order: 8→4 and 5→7 fire back-to-back on the same side. Each bank's exhaust pulses arrive unevenly. That lumpy rhythm is the small-block burble.
Metering fuel
Either way, the target is the same: about 14.7 parts air to 1 part fuel for clean cruising, and richer, around 12.8, at full throttle, where the extra fuel cools the charge and protects against knock. Drag the tach and the dyno's absorber holds rpm steady, so the GAS pedal sets load, not speed. Double-click the tach to let go, and the pedal revs the engine freely.
The half-speed cam
Each valve opens once per cycle, and a cycle takes two crank turns. So the timing chain drives the cam with a sprocket twice as big: 21 teeth on the crank, 42 on the cam.
Crank, rod and piston motion use real 350 geometry: 4.00" bore, 3.48" stroke, 5.7" rods. Valve events, spark advance, flame timing and the air/fuel model are simplified for clarity.
