Hey guys, i think i decided against doing my 455 swap right away. The motor that is in my car is a fresh 350...it has about 4000 miles on it...if that... So here is the deal, im on a quest for a low 11 sec car that is streetable. I dont know much of the details on the motor rebuild, so lets ASSUME its a stock rebuilt bottom end. It has a SMALL cam in it now, but i will be replacing that along with the heads, intake (possibly, its a performer now...any better ideas?), and probably a demon carb (its got edelbrock now) I will also be replacing ignition and putting long tubes on it. Can anyone give me some suggestions from experience on what heads to run (was thinking AFR220???) what intake to run, and what to do for ignition...thinking about MAYBE throwing a SMALL shot of nitrous on it, but i only want to do that if i can hit my goal N/A... Any help is appreciated... Oh yea, its a 1992 Camaro RS with a carbed 350...and rebuilt TH350... Stall, and gear selection i am unsure of as well. Any help is appreciated!! Thanks a lot guys! Looking forward to hearing some input

Define 'Streetable'.

basically, its going to MAINLY be at the strip, but i do want to be able to drive it on the street every now and then just to cruise on nice nights, and to beat up some fords and hondas every once in awhile...

Not daily driver streetable

And you need an 11 sec car to do that?

Apart from that BFO, you need to lose as much weight as you can, legally; you can probably get down to the 3200 lb range without too much difficulty. Once you get there, about 450-500 HP at the crank, WITH TRACTION, should do the trick.

As is typical with this sort of a post, where the questioner has never built anything remotely close to what he's asking about and so has no clue what he's doing just yet, the question implies that all you have to do is just jam lots of HP between the fenders, and ETs will just sort of take care of themselves. Few things are farther from the truth.

Building a motor is the easy part. The part that's going to really matter, is building the CAR. That means doing the right suspension stuff to where you can put real sticky tires (no, I don't mean Pep Boys radials) on it, and hook them up without wheel hop, not break parts all the time, and be consistent.

I'd suggest about 11:1 CR, Dart Pro 1 215 heads, a "street" solid roller with about 245-250° intake duration and about 10° more exhaust (as an example look at a Comp XR286R .... not HR), Perf RPM Air-Gap, 750 CFM carb, 4000 RPM stall, 3.73 gears. LCA reloc brackets, adjustable torque arm, good tires.

thanks for the replies. I have helped buddies on quite a few 10 sec 4th gens...I want to say right now i'm not exactly a beginner...i know my way around cars and motors (im in NO way an expert, nor do i claim to be)

I just didn't know what worked for these cars. In my plans for the car i plan on doing as much suspension/rear end work as i can...Spohn sells lots of stuff that im going to be purchasing over the summer etc...

I'm NOT good with cam selection...so cam suggestions are great. Basically i dont want to be wrenching all the time once its together...unless i break something, which happens

So what are opinions on the AFR heads? Would those be good to run? They seem to have good flow numbers...but real life examples always outweigh paper results...
Thanks for your input guys. Keep the suggestions coming

I've never run AFR; but lots of other people seem to get good results with them. They cost a good bit more than other heads though, if that's an issue; and the small adavantage they may (or may not) have, may not outweigh the substantial cost. Only you can make that call. Kind of like, how much life insurance do you need? There's no one-size-fits-all answer.

The heads you pick affects cam choice; in particular, you pick the intake lobe to put the RPM range where you want it, and then you pick an exhaust lobe in accordance with the intake lobe you picked, and the flow ratios of the exhaust port and the intake port. The better the exhaust flows in relation to the intake, the smaller its lobe wants to be.

I'd run smaller heads (intake port volume I mean), and work on getting them to flow well, which does NOT mean "hogging them out". Getting the flow smooth is worth more because that doesn't create the "too much head for the motor" problem.

But, don't worry so much about the motor. Learn how a suspension works. Check out the "how things work" pages on www.baselinesuspensions.com for a couple of clues, as a starter.

what are the other cheaper heads that are comparible that would get me to my goal? I just know AFR makes pretty good heads for 4th gens...that was my only reason saying them...

That cam talk you just said still has me confused Sorry, oh well i'll find something i'm sure...

You said to use smaller runners for the intake. What size do you think would be good? 195? My goal is to just hit low 11's...and then be able to spray a small shot eventually

For the suspension i'm going to run almost all the spohn components eventualy...i'll just buy them as i have money...starting with the LCA's, sub-frame connectors and probably the drag sway bar...

I will end up putting 3.73's or 4.10's for gears in there...

Thanks for the response

What I meant was, you'll typically go faster, with runners that are no larger than they need to be to support the flow required at the RPM you're going to be running the engine at.

AFR is the big "buzzword" right now. Right on up there with "police interceptor", Vortec", and all those others. They're a good product, don't get me wrong; it's just that there are a bunch of head mfrs out there, and alot of them have excellent products, and you might not feel like it's really worthwhile to spend 50% more money to get 5% more results. Now if you're a NASCAR team, you'd probably spend $5 mil to get 0.5% more results; but most of us aren't quite like that. We kind of balance the incremental cost against the incremental results.

Dart, Brodix, Canfield are some of the head mfrs you might want to check out. For a 350 that's anywhere near streeetable, look at runner sizes between 200 and 215. Below 200 is too small, 220 or more is just too much. You'd have to be spinning it to 8000 to need that much flow, with such a little motor as a 350.

Of course you might look at all the others and come back to AFR, you might decide that their product is worth the brand-name premium; but don't just automatically jump to that conclusion without some research. It's not at all impossible that $500 less in castings, and $250 more in machine work or other parts, will make the car faster, for $250 less. You gotta do the research.

If you want to build a motor for spray, build a motor for spray. The requirements are different from N/A. Different CR, different cam, different exhaust, different fuel plumbing, lots of stuff. Keep in mind too, you stick 100 HP on a 16 second car, it feels like you got hit in the back bumper with a 30,000 lb hammer and you shave 1.5 sec off your time; you stick that same 100 HP on a 500 HP 12 sec car, you can barely tell by the butt dyno that it isn't just a good-air day, and it goes about .2 sec faster, if that. "A small shot" has an entirely different meaning on a 15 second car as opposed to a car that's already low 11s.

i'm actually lookin for a set of aluminum heads right now also for my 383 stroker and i was getting edelbrock performer rpm aluminum heads but now i'm reconsidering spending the extra $300 and buying some dart pro 1 aluminum heads. i'm searchin through the summit magazine right now and i'm interested in part no. DRT-11511122 they are 215cc intake runner/ 64cc chambers/ 2.05/1.6 valves/ and 1.437 double springs. except i don't know if i need angled or straight plugs... but what i'm wondering is how well you think these would work with my 383 stroker? its got an eagle rotating assembley with KB 10.9:1 pistons. the cam is a crane 234/244, .488/.510 lift, hydraulic. it has a weiand intake and edelbrock 750 carb on it.... i think thats about it. but i'm lookin for some opinions as to how well you think these heads will work and how much increase i can expect.... thanks

Where I am from your slow if your running 11's on the street.