Sorry i'm new to the 3rd gen and could not find the info in search. I have an 87 GTA with a 350. I threw a rod at 197k miles and found a decent priced 100k mile motor for 600 bucks to replace it with. My question is the new motor is from a 1990 corvette L98...is this a direct swap? I just had the iron heads redone on the old motor so is it worth the swap to go to the aluminum also? Any and all help is appreciated thanks.

 

Welcome aboard thirdgen.org.

How much of the Vette engine would you get? The aluminum heads had different intake mount bolt angles on the center two bolts on each side (actually, all of the mount bolts on the aluminum heads are at the same angle, vs. the center two being at a different angle on your iron heads), and the aluminum heads didn't have the exhaust "cross-over" passage in the middle of the heads so the EGR system was plumbed differently. I believe the oil pan and oil pump pick-up were also different, so those would have to be changed (new oil pump of the f-body variety strongly advised).

If you don't have the complete TPI system from the Vette, then it might make sense to put your iron heads on the Vette shortblock (make sure no valve damage occurred when things got wacky down under).

 

I would be getting intake to pan no wiring or pulleys besides the balancer pulley. So it would appear that i could use the whole engine from the 1990 except for the oil pan and pickup. Whats the exhaust crossover? Sorry i have owned this thing for 5 years and never drove it until a few weeks ago. Therefore havent researched or worked on it at all hardly. However recently my buddy totalled my 99 trans am so i pulled this one out of storage and low and behold blew the engine within a week. Anyway sorry for the rant...so are the aluminum heads worth the swap?

 

Oh duh sorry egr thats what you mean by exhaust crossover. Well i plan on eliminating it and the air by getting some longtubes since i'm getting the engine out.

 

I have an 88 iroc 305 tpi, just bought a 350 can I use the parts from the 305 to make the 359 a tpi...