so i have an 86 camaro with a 305 tpi motor and just about had all the fun i could so now i purchased a 350 its an 88 Chevy 350 4-bolt main from a 1988 Suburban, Block # 14093638. Came with everything except intake and distributor. Just wanted to know what should i do to this 350 before i put it in to get a lot of power on just motor. How much can i get it bored to? I have vortec heads with the edelbrock vortec intake dont know if i should go hsr on it or port the tpi and heads ?

 

Boring the engine is not going to give you that much power if any. Only bore it to what it takes to clean up the bores.

 

how is that? i thought it should give you a nice increase since you have to buy all new internals ill be getting them from eagle oh btw i have a xe262 cam KIT going in it and getting the heads ported and the plenum. Still think i wont get any power? the shop doing this has a dyno and they promised around 350 to 400 hp the car now doesnt even make 200 so for the 2k i will spend getting all this done i think its a good bet

 

To clarify, you bore the cylinders to the next oversize required to give the pistons and rings a proper surface to run against. To answer how much power increase that would give you would require knowing how badly worn the cylinders are now. Since neither you nor us know that, it's impossible to say.

The typical "next oversize" is 0.030"-over. You can do 0.020" over, but that isn't as common because wear often means more than that is required to clean up one or more of the cylinders in a particular block, so experience in the industry says 0.030" is usually "safe". The message is don't bore it any more than required to clean up the cylinders, because if you bore it beyond that just to make it bigger, you won't gain a significant displacement increase, and you probably just doomed that block to its last rebuild.

I had a 283 I was rebuilding a little over 30 years ago. The machine shop had 7 of the 8 cylinders done at 0.030"-over, and the last cylinder didn't clean up. He was going to go ahead and bore them all to 0.040"-over, but couldn't find any 0.040"-over pistons in the area, but did find some 0.060"-over pistons, so he took them all out to that. 0.040"-over probably would have been fine, but he didn't ask me if I would be willing to wait for pistons to be found (I would have, but it was water under the bridge by the time I found out about the situation). That particular block would take even more over-bore, but later SBC's didn't have as thick of cylinder walls, so 0.060" is typically the most you want to bore them out.

 

yeah a .30 over is good the cylinder walls look very smooth but like you said theres no real way of telling and the shop was thinking of doing a 383 so if i did do that it would have required new heads which are very pricey i might as well buy the darn zz383 for the price they quoted but the .30 will cost under 2k with port and polished vortec heads the rebuild kit and assembly all dropped in. I wish i could do this myself well not the bore or porting but just the assembly it would save me some good money but im no mechanic.

 

Thanks five7kid. Thats exactly what I was trying to say in a short sentence. Also to clarify a .030 over freshly rebuilt bone stock engine will not make much more if any than a bone stock standard bore engine.

 

yep sure thing its all the other stuff like cam and head combo and intake also how your putting the power down so should i get it rebuilt will it be worth it? it is pretty dirty is all everything was running fine on the guys truck it looks like he took good care of it i mean for the money it will cost to bore i might as well buy a crate motor or procharger which i doubt i can save that much i spend too much money going out having fun just wanted a fast car to smoke most imports so im just looking to spend money in the right place. my cousin told me i should go carb and i should get a big difference over the tpi

 

These machine shops must be raking in the money because I had my block done for like $200.

 

Sorry I had a hard time understanding youre last post( no commas).
There's people that will say TPI is better then carb and carb is better then TPI, Its all what you want to do with it.
TPI is old technology but still its a good setup if you get an aftermarket setup and better tuning, but you still have limitaions. Carb is basically the same thing but theres alot more leeway with what cams you can have and ect ect ect.
While carb is cheaper, it also has its pros and cons.

 

alright alright so boring wont do me any good,the walls look smooth. maybe just hot tank the block at napa and get someone to rebuild? and what good will vortec heads do should i get rid of them? i just want a good amount of power for my money. i will be willing to spend 3000 on my car. i can have the money by mid july and maybe sell the old 305 well it only has 92k miles on it so its not that bad. I could get an extra 400 bucks for it probably. I should have just saved up for a crate motor from the start, but ive already spent so muich and this is more fun as i am learning as i go along. I was also thinking of just getting the motor ready for forced induction this year and next year get it procharged.