I have a 400 with crappy 882 castings on it right now. A friend told me that Vortecs would make ludicrous amounts of torque on this beast, and that I should throw them on ASAP. My concern is flow. Do Vortecs flow enough to feed a 400? What cam should I use in that case? Anybody here got a Vortec 400?

PS-on the current setup, I ran a 9.4 at 74 in the 1/8. Hooked perfect with the 2.73 pegleg and got a 2.0 60'.

 

i got a vortec headed 400... stock bore, stock bottom end (rehoned and new bearings) a 214/224 duration cam.. (biggest i could really get without machine work for better valvesprings (dont worry, therell be some work done to the vortecs and a bigger cam next summer (just couldnt go to college with a stock LG4 and i stumbled upon this engine for free))
also a performer RPM air gap and a 600 cfm edelbrock on top (small cam, low redline, dont need a massive carb holding back acceleration yet)

one problem tho, waiting for my headers... ive driven the car for abou 30 miles with stock manifolds with 1 foot pipes and hardly any tuning... cant tell you how it performs yet, cause i havent put it past 1/3 throttle because of it being rebuilt and not being tuned up nicely yet....

id say if your budget isnt massive, then go with the vortecs... just make sure you use dished pistons so your compression doesnt get too high for pump gas (unless youre into that kind of thing) and get steam holes drilled into the heads (you can do it yourself or any machine shop can do it for about 20$)

heres a buildup chevy hi performance did with a 406 and vortec heads... (basically my combo but with a bigger cam...i cant wait till next summer )

http://www.chevyhiperformance.com/te...406/index.html

 

I have the Fastburns on my 406 and it revs to 6500 pulling strongly.

 

I have Vortecs on my 406 with Keith Black 30 cc dished pistons (part number KB126) and a Comp Cams 268 Extreme Energy Cam. The guides need to be milled down to accomodate lifts over .465 and normally spring pockets need to be enlarged to fit in bigger springs (1.25" stock to 1.5"). I bypassed the enlarged springs by using Comp Cam Conical Valve springs (beehive shaped). Motor pulls like a freight train.