according to the VIN # on my car, i do not have the stock engine in it. My car is an 86 trans am and i bought it about 3 weeks ago. It is my first car and my parents bought it for me so i can fix it up before i turn 16 and get my drivers liscence. They only came with 5.0 L 305CID. Mine has a 350 engine that is painted blue.( i belive pontiac engines were blue) How do i tell exactly what kind of engine it is?

 

Paint color means nothing. A chev engine is a chev and a pontiac engine is a pontiac. I really doubt you have a pontiac engine. It's not an easy conversion to do.

The only way to know exactly what engine is in your car is to get the codes off the block. On the rear driver side you'll find casting numbers. You should be able to tell if it's a 350 or 305 block just from that number.

On a pad in front of the passenger side head are stamped the suffix numbers. That will tell you exactly what engine it is and tell you what vehicle it originally came from.

 

why would it be a hard conversion if my car is a pontiac. One would think that a pontiac engine would easily fit into a pontiac car. BTW - im not trying to be smart.

 

get the block casting number off the bell housing flange, a surface right behind the driver's side head. Conveniently located in an accessible place, of course. The head casting number is equally important, it's under the valve covers.

The stamping numbers are usually useless. All they will tell you is where the block came from, not the engine. Odds are extremely high that if the block has been painted, it's a rebuilt engine, and the heads and block didn't come from the same place. Don't waste your time and effort on those unless you know for certain that you have a whole engine lifted from some other vehicle intact and put into your car, which it sounds like you don't.

OBTW - the Pontiac engine was never installed in one of these chassis, so there's no exhaust for it, no trans that will hook up to it (the bolt pattern is different from Chevy), no accessories, etc. It's better to think of your car as a Chevy with some slightly differently wrinkled sheet metal and an alternate set of stickers. It's possible to put a Pontiac motor in one, with enough fabrication and ingenuity; but for the amount of trouble that mosst of use would have to go through to do it, it's just not worth it. Their motors are perfectly good but not so good that you can't build a better Chevy one for les money. Too much maze with too little cheese at the end.