I was walking through one of the local junkyards with a friend the other day, and i came across a 1969 GMC 3500 pickup. We decided to open the hood, and the valve covers on the small block in the truck said invader 307, and it had a 4bbl carb on it. My question is, does anyone know anything about this type of motor, and if they do, could anyone tell me what kind of power it was making. We started the truck, and it sounded like the engine ran pretty good, and it had a good sound to it. A friend of mine was considering the motor for a swap into his Camaro

 

The 307 gets a bad rap because it was used in low HP applications and came with miserable heads, a tiny cam and a 2bbl carb. If you changed those things, it could perform pretty well. Probably not well enough to justify choosing it over any other used engine, though.

 

The only reason my friend was thinking about it was because it was for 175 for the whole truck, but the engine didnt smoke at all, started on the first try, and didnt make any noises. The truck was in good shape for the year, and it the odometer read 74000. So my friend was thinking about it because his camaro has a V6 and a screwed up transmssion. It seemed to rev fairly fast, and I think the engine may have been worked a little already. After all, it does have a 4bbl carb, which looks kind of like a carter. It has a bad water pump, but the guy at the yard said there was one with it when he got it, and it supposedly used to belong to a guy that used the truck to tow his race car and trailer it sat on. for $175 does it seem like a bad deal? Also, do you know anything about what the "invader 307" on the valve covers has to do with anything about the engine?

 

Boy, that brings back memories.

"Invader" was the GMC pet-name for their V8 engines. Chevys had "Turbofire" V8 engines, and GMC had to be different, so they put stickers on theirs called "Invader".

That is the sum total of what it means. . .

 

 

i dunno, i'd buy it though

 

Chevy also had Hi-Thrift, Turbo-Thrift, Turbo Fire or Turbo-Jet, depending on whether you had an L4, L6, SBC or BBC. It seems like meaningless engine names are making a comeback now with "Vortec", "Powerstroke", "Magnum" and "Hemi" stickers all over everything.