I bought an 89 iroc 305 tbi car without an engine. I just found a 305 tpi Camaro motor with low miles. Are the long blocks the same? I want to keep the tbi setup. Also, I have a standard and this is out of an automatic car and I hear that some of the cranks didn't except the stock pilot bearing, has anyone had these problems?
Thanks for any help.
Bob

 

You should be able to get it to work, there are a few changes like roller cams, valve covers,flywheel & intake bolt patterns. These changes occured around 1987.

 

Welcome aboard thirdgen.org.

Are the long blocks the same? No.

Will a TPI longblock work with TBI? Yes.

There are no differences between manual and automatic tranny cranks. There were differences between flywheel mounting depending upon the year of the engine, but if above 1986, not an issue for an '89.

So you have the TBI setup but not the engine? Kind of unusual. Hopefully you have all of the parts you need. If that's the case, then you should verify your TPI longblock is '87 or later. The intake manifold bolt pattern (angle of the center two bolts on each side) changed in '87.

 

The entire story is, I bought an 89 iroc convertible from a guy who bought it off a kid that blew the engine up, and took it out of the car. So I did get the tranny, drive shaft, one of the front brackets, and the exhaust manifolds. It was missing the radiator/condenser, engine. I bought a 91 305 tbi parts car with high miles, thinking it was running and I'm not driving it more than a few thousand miles a year. I started taking the engine apart because it needed an oil pan, and I was going to throw in a timing chain. Didn't like what I saw, so I kept getting in deeper. Now it looks like it's going to cost a lot to get the engine in good shape. I just found a local guy selling a 305 tpi with 78K (who really knows), so it was just a thought. Didn't have the year in the ad, but the camaro looked like the 91 I have. Thanks for the info!
bob

 

will any 87 n up tbi block fit a 91z tpi without changes?

 

ALL '87-'95 305 blocks are totally interchangeable and absolutely identical. Likewise crankshafts and connecting rods. They all should have come with dished pistons. The big difference is in the cams and the heads. The 5-speed TPI 305s got the best cams, the TBI 305s got the worst cams. Likewise for heads. The best heads have a casting number ending with '081, you'll find this under the valve covers. Any of the '87-'95 manifolds will bolt to any of the '87-'95 heads. Again, the TPI 5-speed cars got the best manifolds, TBI got the worst.