I just bought a 1987 Camaro Z28 from a friend. The stock engine has been replaced with 327 small block but the tranny is still standard. I was wondering if it is possible to swap the stock automatic tranny for a manual T-56. If i do, would I have to worry about the engine milage vs. the transmission's milage. Would the two mate properly? What safety or mechanical issues might I come across? I've worked on cars before but this will be the biggest thing ive done and would like to do it safely and correctly.

 

Try asking in the trans dept.
https://www.thirdgen.org/forums/tran...ns-drivetrain/

Some good T56 swap info over there
https://www.thirdgen.org/forums/tran...ap-thread.html

 

An issue that I forgot to mention was that the 305 engine was swapped for a 327 from a 79 corvette. Also I guess whoever did that couldn't find a way to properly mate the bell housing so they simply left it off. MAJOR SAFETY ISSUE!

 

First off there really isn't any difference, externally, between the SBC 305 block and the 327 block. Second, the 327 motors were not factory produced past 1969 so I'm not sure if you got the year wrong or you don't have a 327.

One thing you run into with SBC blocks from different years is that some holes are not drilled and tapped and the oil passage near the oil filter is plugged instead of tapped. (fuel pump oil pressure switch) The Gen II blocks also have the same bell housings and engine mount designs as the Gen I SBC blocks. These didn't change until the Gen III motors (LSx)

 

I'd love to see how they got an automatic trans to function without a bellhousing. You sure you're not confusing the bellhousing with the inspection plate?

 

This reminds me of buying something (set of heads I think it was) early in my career in this hobby, let's call it early 70s... Guy says, I got a set of heads in one of my Vettes, you can have em for like $25 (gotta remember this was before the Carter tax cuts and all that). I arrange to come pick em up that weekend. I get there, he goes out to a derelict parts car in his back 40, and pulls a set of what turned out to be 2-bbl heads out of the "back seat" area, whatever you want to call that, of about a 65 Vette carcass, and hands em to me. Of course I had witnessed with my own eyes that they were "out of a Vette"; but somehow I still felt ripped off. Didn't get any happier when I found out that the heads were GARBAGE.

Learned my lesson THE HARD WAY that day. You just got the privilege of learning it THE EASY WAY (reading it on the Internet). Algore hadn't invented the Interwebz back then so I was as näive as a newborn babe at the time. My shell hardened quick though.

Your 327 is not "out of" a 79 Vette. Last year of the 327 was 71 if memory serves, in trucks; last year of it in the Vette I believe was 68. So even if the motor "had at one time been in" a 79 Vette, it's irrelevant. Meanwhile, the majority of 79 Vette motors were the L48; the identical same mighty 180 HP smogger turd that came in Impalas, trucks, Novas, and everything else.

In fact it's quite likely that given the impossible lie you were told about the motor's origin, that it's (a)not a 327 at all; (b) not out of a Vette at all; and (c) not from 79 at all. Any or all of those details could be untrue. When you run the block casting number you may well find that it's REALLY a 305 out of a 78 Malibu or something.

But that doesn't matter; 305, 327, 350, 283, all the same. It's a 2-pc rear main seal block, therefore a T-56 will bolt up to it the same as to any other motor with the 2-pc rear main seal. You'll need the $$$special$$$ conversion flywheel, and to make sure the block has the bolt holes for the 78-up starter pattern. Blocks from before 78 generally don't have that "feature from the future" unless someone has added it, the way I did to this 73 400 block.

Flywheel:



Starter bolt holes:



The oil passage hole referred to above is ALWAYS tapped and plugged; has been in EVERY SBC since 1955. Its existence is a consequence of drilling the passage carrying filtered oil from the oil filter pad to the vertical passage that runs up the back of the block. You can see it in this drawing at the left edge.



Other than those 2 things, you swap will be the same as everybody else's T-56 swap, should be a piece o cake.

 

Been there.

Back in 1985 I asked a guy, his car ran 13's, what all he had done to his motor and he replies "I installed a set of double hump heads and a big cam" I asked what compression that brought the motor up to and his reply was "That doesn't matter, these are double hump heads!"


I don't like to argue on the internet because it is just point less but I do have to say that I have come across a 350 SBC where that oil passage just had a pressed in plug and it wasn't tapped. I thought the same way you did until I helped out a local guy assemble a 70's 350 and I wound up having to remove that plug and had to tap the hole so his pressure switch could be mounted.

That was the first block I've seen like that and haven't seen another one yet.

 

Pressed in, sure; haven't ever seen one like that myself, but that's not to say it can't happen; but there's ALWAYS ALWAYS ALWAYS a hole there with SOME KIND of a plug in it, since that oil passage can't possibly have been drilled otherwise. Although given some of the blocks I've come across that it was IMPOSSIBLE to build a motor that didn't blow up out of them, maybe that passage IS missing sometimes. With the quality control they had in the 70s, nothing that could possibly be done wrong and they would ship it anyway, would surprise me.

 

In fact as I think about it, it also wouldn't surprise me if what you REALLY had was, where somebody at some prior point in its life had tried to remove the threaded plug and failed; drilled it out; and weenied out on their customer and put a drive plug in there instead of just tapping it to 3/8" pipe and using a larger threaded plug (original was a ¼").

Like OE quality control, almost no "shortcut" on the part of a "rebuilder" would surprise me.

 

Yea back in the early years there were some strange things coming off the production lines at times.