Here's my 2cents
You want power at take-off right,
and don't care about track times, right.
You need torque and lots of it, or you need TM(Torque Multiplication). That's all there is to it.
So you can do it with engine, or you can do it with TM and stall.
You gotta stop equating Horsepower at 5500 rpm as being meaningful to a streeter. You are only gonna hit peak power once on the way to the speed limit, and it comes at around 40mph. That is a useless target, when all that beast will do is chirp the tires off idle Am I right?
No; you want mega ftlbs on the start-line, ready to roast the tires, and if the tires light up right away, then that is a pleasure to deal with. So forget about 400hp at 5500,(or whatever). Instead concentrate on 250/300ftlbs at stall. Who cares about power after that, cuz we're spinning,wheeee!
One of the reasons everyone wants 400hp is cuz that combo can pull some big Mph number in the quarter. The fact is that it takes lotsa horsepower to push thru the air at 100 plus mph, but it takes 1/4 as much to hit 60mph as compared to hit 120. Excess power goes to tirespin, and tirespin while addictive, is slower than hooking.And if you can't use all of the power, then you might as well have a smaller engine.
So, IMO, fogetabowd a horsepower target at all, and just optimize what you got.
Like your friend says, give your current combo a chance.
Another 2cents;
Any cam you put in that 360, with no other changes, that is bigger than the current cam, and from the same manufacturer, will trade away low rpm torque for higher rpm power. There is no way around this. IMO,If you can't boil the hides,this is a step in the wrong direction. I don't like 112LSA cams for this type of application, and I especially don't like a cam like yours in an 8.8 Scr360; it just bleeds cylinder pressure, and sucks gas. That doesn't mean your combo can't be made to smoke the tires with it; it just means I don't like it,lol.
Your Dcr/ cylinder pressure , works out to 7.34/144, which, IMO, is on the low side. So the first thing I would do is a compression test with a known accurate gauge to verify that pressure. It's not the end of the world if your pressure is down there, it just means a few less ftlbs on the dyno, which we have to make up for, with TM.
And more opinion.
No dyno graph?
Get yourself a windshield mounted accelerometer. Now you can quantify every change you make to your car.
Now
I didn't read the whole thread so I may be repeating some things here.
The first step to smoking the tires, if you had a clutch would be to rev it up and dump it. The flywheel which has stored the energy in it, will break the tires loose, and once they are spinning, you only need to keep them spinning until the engine reaches equilibrium with tireslip, and then she's off like a bolt of lightning.
With an automatic, the way to do that is with convertor stall.
More opinion.
With typical 15" street tires you need about 1500ftlbs to the road to break traction. Then you just rev it up some to keep them spinning. Obviously the more power your engine has,at low rpm, the easier this will be both to initiate and to maintain.
The math
If you have say 3.23s, a typical street rear gear, then 1500/3.23=464 ftlbs out of the transmission is required. With a 2.45 low gear, this would be 464/2.45=190ftlbs . So then you look on your horsepower graph to see at what rpm 190ftlbs comes, and order a TC with at least that much stall. But you will quickly find out that as soon as the tires heat up a bit, they won't want to continue spinning. And you really want to annihilate them. So lets say you add 30% to the ftlbs giving you a nice bit of headroom. So then 190 plus 30%=250ftlbs. Look on the graph, find the rpm where 250 first occurs, and order up a TC with that stall rating, in rpm.
But what if you have 3.91s?
Same trick; 1500/(3.91x2.45)x 1.3=200ftlbs now. Look on your power-graph and order a TC with at least that much stall.
But say you have a 2400TC, and want to keep it. Then you look on the graph, find the ftlbs at 2400 and rearrange the equation to spit out a minimum rear gear. Say you found 220ftlbs at 2400.
(1500x1.3) /(2.45x220)= 3.55s..
No dyno graph? Get the accelerometer.
Or you could do what I did; 2800TC and 4.30s is guaranteed to put the biggest stoopid grin on your face that a week of sex is barely gonna affect.
Ok so now you know how to get the tires spinning. That 112Lsa cam will plateau on the power curve early, but with good heads, will carry the power for a long,long, ways. If you hit the TM target right, you might find yourself in the situation of having a preponderance of low-rpm power. If that happens to you, you can trade some away for another 100rpm or perhaps 150, by retarding that cam. In at the recommended 108, she's gonna be hard on gas. Between those two, retiming to 110 will help, a lil.
Now
as for me, I'm more interested with having power at 30mph, to blast off with. At 30, the 1500ftlbs is no longer adequate. Say you have settled on 3.55s. Your rpm at 30 in first gear will be about 3400, so the TC ain't slipping much anymore. So look on your graph at 3400 and find the available torque at that rpm. I bet it will be 95% of the peak, so lets say 360ftlbs. Doing the math; 360x2.45x3.55=3130 to the road. This should be enough to break traction with any street tire and no traction aider. I know it would make me happy,lol.
With 2.76s the number is 2540, and it will be considerably more difficult. The 600VS IMO, I doubt will do it. You need to shock the tires with with all 4 bbls, instantly; enter the Double-Pumper.
What I like
about double pumpers, is I get more control. I decide how much power to dial in. The Vs carbs were just too slow and too ambiguous, for my driving style. But they don't always work well on TM-handicapped combos. If the engine is at low-rpm but above stall you might/probably will, get a hesitation, and the more towards hiway that the gears are biased, and the slower the transmission is to kick down,the worse the hesitation can get.
As to which carb from your collection, YOU use:
again this is dependent on the TM, and between say 3500 and about 5000, makes as good as zero difference to a streeter...... except if you can't delay the secondaries to prevent a bog. The smaller the carb, the faster and sooner the secondaries can be opened, and a 600carb at 5000rpm, with 3.55s, will be doing ~44mph; almost time to shift with that cam. Your 600 is mathematically big enough for over 5000rpm. The thing is, if your engine can only pull in 500cfm no matter what, then there is not much point in bolting on a 770. It will only make problems for you at low-rpm.
And more opinion
If your engine was my engine, I wouldn't be satisfied with 144psi cylinder pressure.I know you said your best gas was like our 87. But is it really? My research shows that your gas is really just a more strenuous test protocol and a rebadging at the pumps. But the fuel is exactly the same. So an engine that runs detonation-free on 91 here, our best pumpgas, should run detonation free on your best pump gas.
I don't know if that is true (you need to research that yourself,for your own piece of mind);
But IF THAT IS TRUE,THEN..... then you should be able to run much more cylinder pressure, up to 160psi depending on your Quench and chamber, and other various parameters, but at the very least, at 155psi.
Of course the higher Dcr required to achieve this will reshape your powercurve with more ftlbs throughout the rpm band, but specifically at low-rpm. And that means a lesser stall-speed requirement, and/or a lesser rear gear.
Parting shot
Or you could just do what I did; throw 4.30s and a 2800 at it, that will fix anything, and call it done,lol. Be sure to go home once in a while; wives like that.