I'm looking to do a swap in my 91 camaro rs. It's a 5 speed car with 3.08 gears. I have a $1500 budget. I'm looking to get at least 300hp and a decent amount of torque. Its my daily driver, so I'm looking to KEEP IT TBI.
I have 406,377, and a 350. Which one should I use?

The 406 has ported heads and a needs to be rebuilt.

The 377 was my dads drag motor. It has 13:1 compression, dome pistons, and a mean roller cam. It also has dart heads that are too large. It would have to be toned down a bit.

I also have a 350. It's a TBI LO5 roller motor out a roadmaster. It would have to be souped up a little bit. I feel like this would be the cheapest to build.

Which should I use?

 

406 is already at max bore.

The 377 is not streetable and pump gas and may never be.

Consider stroking the 350, but power is power, displacement doesn't care. Put some good rod bolts and rods in it and you can turn up the RPMs whenever you want later on to get more power out of it. Power is all in the heads/cam/intake, so make sure you spend your money there first after you get the vitals for long term reliability sorted. Roller cam or gtfo.

 

The 400 needs rings and bearings. I could tone the 377 down... But I don't need the rpms it creates. It's just that it has really nice parts in it. Cheetah rods, crane roller rockers, forged crank, etc.

 

The 377 has a 4" bore and a 3.75" throw crank with domed pistons. the only way to tone it down is to lower the compression(flat tops or dished pistons) and then shrink the cam. It needs rings and bearings so it will probably need a bore and new pistons anyway so that's doable, and maybe selling off the stuff in it will pay for more street-friendly stuff. But you need to do the math on it.

 

I think I will hit stick to the 350. It will be the cheapest and still have good power. And it provably get the best milage.

 

Put some good bolts in the bottom end of the 350 and use the heads from the 377. Good roller cam and good intake. Mine is only 370 cubic inch with 230 brodix heads with raised ports. I run a .600 lift cam, team g intake, hogged out. It is streetable but gas mileage is not so good. Its worth it when hit I mash the go pedal over 3500 rpm and it smokes em into third gear. I do absolutely no city driving with this car. I don't even have one red light in my town and unless its a state road there isn't even posted speed limits, it's awesome. lmao. Just my .02 cents and it probably isn't worth that.

 

But I need to get good milage . It's my daily driver. And the Dart heads on the 377 are a little too big...

 

Yeah don't do what I said. You need to figure out the cheapest way to build a mild stockish 350 if it is your daily, and mileage is a priority.

 

OK, so you have a 4.125" block. (in whatever overbore, let's leave that aside for the moment)

350 = get another block

I could be wrong, but... doesn't seem too smart

406 = perform typical high-mileage maintenance on your 400 block

Seems fairly reasonable

377 = remove CID from your 400

How is this A Good Idea?

Yeah I've done it for customers before. They complained that the 400s KILLED EM coming up off the corners, EVERY TIME. Got to where whenever somebody came to me and wanted to NUT their unfortunate 400 that way, I'd try to talk em out of it. Can't think of even ONE SINGLE TIME a 377 won any races. EVERY SINGLE ONE, LOST. I can recall more than one instance where I UNDID that for people who got tired of getting beat. (at a net loss to their bank account, don't forget)

So what were we talking about anyway? I forgot.

 

Good luck trying to get a 400 to reach 8000rpms

 

Are we talking about a 4" bore 3.75 stroke 377? Or a 4.125" bore, 3.48 stroke 377? Because I was just assuming a stock bore 350 block with a stroker crank.

RPMs are all in the heads and valvetrain. You just need more heads and more cam to do it with a 400. Lower rotational mass helps, but only if you're trying to maximize power under a displacement limitation. Also I imagine if you're doing a lot of high RPM road racing the shorter stroke will make for lower piston speeds and perhaps a slightly more durable engine when used in max effort, constant high RPM situations.