I bought a 350 bored .030 over for my 89 trans am. I am trying to figure out how to gain about 400 hp. The guy I bought it from said it had 2.02 heads (unknown on exhaust) and a mild cam, and "Corvette Valve Spring" lol, and flat top pistons. Compression on it is supposed to be 10:1.

• So far I have Hooker 2055 headers, with a full 3" exhaust running back, cat was eliminated also.
• Put a cold air intake on it
• Add a air foil.

Any ideas on what else I could do to gain horsepower? And if change the heads, what would be good to switch to?


Thanks.

 

do you want to go fuel injected or a carb'd setup? Also what's your budget like?

 

My budget would be what it would have to, preferably a low budget, but I do realize that making horsepower cost money. Also, I would prefer to keep it injected.

I really just dont want to touch crank, rods, pistons, cam (anything actually in the block) but would be willing to do other things such as heads and etc.

 

as Someone who is currently going down this road. I'd save until you can afford what you want. I've dropped a significant amount of money on my top end. From vortec heads, springs, valves, seals, and rockers, an edelbrock vortec base, slp runners and porting everything. Then 24lb/hr injectors with an adjustable fuel pressure regulator. Hindsight being 20/20 I would have went a different route like a stealth ram with some rhs heads or if I decided to stay tpi I would have atleast went with aftermarket heads.

 

How much horse would you say you are at right now by doing what you did with your vortec heads. Also Stealth ram? Never heard of this.

 

I'm building right now rough estimate is somewhere around 400 hopefully on the plus side of 400 simply because I've done just about everything I could. However I choose to go edelbrock vortec intake 906 vortecs and a set of ported slp runners with ported plenum. I WOULD have gone with a stealth ram and aftermarket heads. The reason being I spent as much on my heads as I could a set of aftermarket heads. And for a few extra bucks had a better intake. from what I've researched if I would have put the amount of work into the stealth ram as I have my tpi I would be sitting pretty somewhere well above 400hp

 

Any suggestion on aftermarket heads?

 

Trick Flows. Any aluminum head RHS is cheapest right now, AFR is the best but cost like hell, Trick Flows are almost as good as AFR and much less money but not cheap. Best Iron is Dart Iron Eagles.

 

10.1 is outside of the envelope of what we like to see for cast iron heads.Does the block still have the stamped numbers on the front passenger side??. If not,maybe someone already decked the block.Have you measured at TDC piston to deck??. This info is important in making proper parts choices.

 

I presume you mean you want to attain about 400HP, to gain it would require quite a lot more work. I think that your goal will be difficult if you are unwilling to do anything in the block. In order to make a nicely functioning engine you will need to match the cam and the heads at least. Since you do not know what cam you have this will be difficult.