I'm thinking about finding a 350 to put in place of my 305 tpi(LB9). I've gathered from here that all that will need changing is the injectors and chip. Is there anything I'm overlooking? Is there certain year 350's that will be more of a pain or will any 350 just drop in? The car has a 700r4 so I take it that there won't be any problem there. Any help would be appreciated.

 

Welcome aboard.

'86 is a bastard year. It has the new one-piece rear main seal, so the pan and flex plate are different from earlier years. But, it has the old-style intake manifold bolt pattern (center two on each side).

An '85-older 350 will be easier to mount than '87-later, since all you need to change for the former is the flex plate. But, all you need to do for '87-later heads is elongate the bolt holes in the base for those four bolts (or trade your base with someone like me who has an '87-later base in the garage attic and '86-earlier heads in the car...).

The only other issue is '78-earlier blocks had the dip stick on the driver's side. Stock manifolds won't clear the tube, so headers are in order (but you were going to do that, anyway - right?).

 

First off, thanx for the info. Yeh, I already have long tube headers with an exhaust off a 99' SLP SS welded up. I need new headers though, I live in Louisiana and the person who had the car before me lowered it. You may already know this but for those who don't we, without doubt, have the worst streets in the world here. My y-pipe is also shot to hell. I figure that if I do go through with the swap I will just get two borla xr-1's, an H-pipe, turndowns, and bring it to a local muffler shop that does really good work cheap and have them set me up with true duel. As for the intake being different, I have a set of vortec heads sitting around so I was planning on getting the SDPC intake and putting those on. Does this mean I can put any 350 79' and up in with no problem?

 

I wouldn't go so far as to say "no problems", flex plate being one such "problem". But, you can basically use any year 350 block up through LT1.

 

How did you get '99 Camaro SS headers to fit on a 305? arent those LS1 headers?

Anyway, i have a '79 350 block in my Z28, and it fit pretty well, but beware the starter's bolt pattern, it may give you a hard time like it did me. This was in an '83 though, so it could be different.

 

I have long tube headers, it was from the cat back off the 99' SS.