I am looking for advice from you seasoned vets. skip the next paragraph to read my questions and concerns.

My dad and I have been working every Saturday since Jan on my 91 camaro and we got a 350 and tpi from a junked 92 formula. Turned the 350 into a 383 and put it and the tpi and formula wire harness on. Rerouted the battery, got a serp belt recommended here and removed the smog, put a plate over the egr, got a chip specific to the 383, and a lot more smaller things like polish the tpi and ported the heads and intake blah blah

383 tpi 10:1 compression .500 lift comp cam aluminum heads estimated 415 HP

Ok so what we didn't do and I can't afford to do for a couple months because I'm getting married
* upgrade the exhaust
* Upgrade the injectors from the stock 22 lbs
* upgrade the cooling system, rad water pump etc
* upgrade the stock 91 rs auto tranny. I believe it's a 700r4



OK I don't plan on driving like an ******* but I'm still worried about those things hurting my investment. We got it fired up with 93 octane and it sounds good but she overheats and something is heavily draining the battery when the key is off and we spent a little time on each area but haven't solved it yet.

Sorry for the long post and if some info doesn't belong here. Every time I ever had a problem since I got this car 9 years ago Google would bring me here so I respect and trust your opinions

 

have you been driving the car?
if your breaking it in sitting in the driveway, its a good idea to put a fan in front of the car. it helps push some air threw the radiator.

 

Only drove it ten minutes round trip from the gas station. All highway miles and the gage still ran high. Changed the thermostat to a 160 amd that works. Temp sensor is new now but I checked the new and old and those work.
we had the dual fans and A big floor fan on the car for the break in

 

Youre radiator might not flow enough if its an old one, there might be lots of dirt/bugs jammed in it. Also with the stock injectors, if youre running lean because you dont have the right injectors, that will cause your engine to run hot and its not good for an engine to run lean, so please be careful of that or you can mess up the engine.

 

You said you got a 383 -specific chip for the car? Is the ecm a 91-92 speed density or 86-89 MAF ecm?

If the chip wasn't modified for the lack of egr, the larger motor size (cylinder volume) and the cam (VE tables modified if it is speed density), then it won't run right until the chip is tuned.

The stock exhaust, trans, cooling system and injectors are not a problem if you drive the car like a normal person and don't 'get on it'.

You might run out of injector once the car is tuned, the stock exhaust won't do anything but limit power, I am still running the stock cooling system on my 383 with no issues.

Wire in a manual fan switch on the secondary cooling fan and run the fan all the time. The ecm will control the driver side fan with the fan on/off temps.

 

your going to run hot and lean on 22#hr injectors

 

Alright I have both fans running full time and I got some bottle of **** that guarantees 20 degrees cooler temps. the radiator is clean of bugs and stuff and seems to be flowing nicely. i am really not sure if i am over heating but the plug says i am big time. the temp gun on the water housing only gets to 200 and the rad hoses read the same or lower.

i got my hands on some ls1 24lb injectors until i can get some 28s or 30s and tune them in the future. i will finish swapping out the injectors tmrw but how can i use this temp gun to see if my cylinders are actually getting too hot? my manifolds get really hot and the sensor is so close to them, also i have aluminum heads so they probably disperse more heat than the iron ones. coolant never boils but my gauge says im 250ish before i shut it down. i bought a new sensor also and they both read the same\\

edit just to say the engine sounds nice and runs nice, my only problem is this supposed overheating scaring me from driving it more than 50 feet.

really appreciate your replies, especially somebody else running a 383 on the stock cooling system