70BuickSleeper

My car is an 84 z28 l69, has hooker shortys, hooker 3 inch cat back (no cat), 3.73 gears, edelbrock intake, carb spacer, demon, mallory distributer. Any way, my engine is on the way out, pretty sure its head gaskets. Im not to interested in putting the time and money into this engine, Im looking for a low cost, good 350 buildup. How would my heads work on a 350? are they any good or what kind of factory heads should I look for. I want more power than I have now, but Im on a tight budget. What year block should I look for ? what codes on the block do I want? Any help you guys can give me will help. Im not to concerned about emissions as I already dont have any of that stuff on the engine. Im thinking like a junkyard block and heads maybe, or my heads, my intake, my oil pan, and i would guess like a cam kit from summit with new lifters to give me some power. I just worried about the compression ratio in the junkyard block. I think im at 9.5 or around there, I forget. I dont mind having to use premium gas. I would think even if the junkyard blocks pistons will give a low comp. ratio, if my heads were good to use on it it would bump it up. Please help me out. thanks

five7kid

iTrader: (14)

In order for the 305 heads to work well on a 350, they should have 1.94" intake valves installed and some basic port work done. If you get factory 350 heads, about the only ones I know of that are decent are L98 083 castings, and even they will benefit from basic port work.

By "cam kit from summit", did you mean Summit brand? Hope not, those things are cheap for a reason. If you meant something from Comp or Crane or Isky, that's a different matter.

I'm in the process of putting a 350 shortblock under my ported World 305 heads. I picked dished pistons with 11cc of dish/valve reliefs vs. the typical 5cc of valve reliefs flat tops. 11 minus 5 is 6, the same as 64cc (350 heads) minus 58cc (305 heads). Should yield around 9.5:1 compression.

Getting an '80-'85 block would mean the least retrofitting. However, '86-up wouldn't be that big of a problem (flexplate).

70BuickSleeper

I was refering to either crane or comp cams kits, just that summit carries everything are reasonably cheap. I went over to the local engine guy over here today, hes guessing about 1000 bucks for a pretty good built short block - new pistons, rings, bearings, etc etc.... Hes gonna figure out something and give me a call in a few days. I think I want around 350horse/torque or more, nothing crazy, but enough to be fun, because this is my daily driver. Im probably going to start tearing down the top of the 305 to see whats going on. If its head gaskets and not the intake - maybe ill just do the gaskets and throw a different cam in for the time being. I really have no idea what im gonna do, I have to think about this for awhile.