91B2L

I getting everything planned out to swap a new engine when the time comes. Has anyone rebuilt their first engine and had good results with the work you've done? I've never built a engine before, only seen it done and know what it takes to do it. I'me looking at a basic L98 short block from Pace. I'm looking at making 330-360hp. This isn't a daily driver. I don't see myself getting over 5500rpm to often. One more question, the 300hp TPI from www.goautocenter.com has an option of having Edelbrock or Trickflow heads $2855, both heads have 2.02-1.60 valves, are these heads alittle big for the .214int .220exh @.050 .452int .465exh lift.?

johnsjj2

THe first engine I built ran real well. I built it for a friend in high school that had a 70 C-10. The only thing I messed up on was I tried to install one of the 4 bolt caps on backwards. I busted half of the outer bolt hole off. To remedy this I turned it around properly, and had 1-3 bolt main. It ran great.

five7kid

iTrader: (14)

Did a ring & bearing job on the original '57 283 32 years ago. It lasted about 10k miles/2 years before one of the pistons came apart at the pin (had ~100k miles on it by that time). I was told later that their castings were pretty poor back in those days, so it wasn't really my fault.

The heads will handle more cam, but aren't too much for it. The base engine really suffers from the heads it comes with, so the upgrade is probably a good idea. Might want to include a cam upgrade while you're at it.

BTW, help isn't all that far away...

ede

i did a 327 in high school and a 283 for a 67 camaro right out of high school. both worked and ran ok, but i never kept either long enough to know how long they actually lasted.

PLANT PROTECTION

iTrader: (6)

Rebuilt my first SBC one year and 7k ago, all is well so far. While planning the build and gathering money, I read just about every book and thread pretaining to engine building I had access to, I contribute most of my success to that.

bnoon

First off, know the math involved. Calculating compression ratio, knowing how to determine clearance values, knowing what those clearance values mean, are all needed before you turn the first bolt. Searching on the web for these formulas are rather easy via webcrawler, msn, yahoo, etc.

After that, it's only nuts and bolts!

Get yourself involved in some tuning too if you're staying fuel injected. Nothing is worse than seeing a great combination put out crappy numbers on a stock chip.

Also, I'm partial to the Trickflows. Had some on my 420" stroker in a 2.02" 220cc ported version. 510 HP to the rear wheels and 500 TQ.

RB83L69

The first engine I built was a 283. It lasted about 80,000 miles. It went through a couple of sets of heads before I got some good ones, outlasted a couple of the cars it was in, ran great, and was alot of fun.

I wish I had known more about what I was doing when I built it. We didn't have things like the Internet back then, where we could all learn from each other's mistakes. I had the privilege of making about every stupid mistake you can make all on my own.

That cam you quote isn't a real good choice for a TPI motor. Get one designed specifically to work with TPI, not some generic 30-year-old grind, even though that cam works fairly well in a typical carb application.