I'm very good mechanically but I'm about to venture into my first engine rebuild as I'm restoring my first car. It's a 91 Camaro RS with a 305.

I'm looking for general information or "gotcha's" that I should keep in mind. I don't see the task as being very hard, just time consuming and it's not my daily driver so not in a rush.

Besides some of the obvious (take lots of pictures, bag and label everything, etc), what other things should I consider during the process?
Anything unique to consider when pulling the engine?
Any "no brainer" upgrades I should do while the engine is out?

The forums seem very mixed on whether to pull the engine and transmission together or separate. I think I've settled on pulling both since I can get the car back end up high and have a leveler to help with the pull. Also pulling both allows me to get a better look at the transmission as well.

While it's out should I look to replace the torque converter or am I good as long as it's working?

Advice or just insight is appreciated!

Note: I've seen a lot of opinions stating it's not worth rebuilding a 305 but to find a 350. Perhaps in the future or on a future project car I'll take that route. I figured since this is my first and I'm largely doing this to learn and become more familiar with everything, I've decided not to go down that path.

 

Do a 350 man. If your looking to do a full rebuild on the engine the the 305 and 350 will cost you the same amount. In fact sometimes the 350 will be cheaper as a lot of places charges more for the 305 rebuild kits. Spend the $100-250 extra to buy a 350 core engine and build it. I would rather have a flat tappet cam 350 than a roller cam 305 any day.

Pull both engine and trans out as one unit and install the same way. If your hoist has a short boom you can pull out with hoist in front of car most times, but putting it back you will need to put hoist on side of car rather than front as the hoist jack will hit bumper before you get all the way in with engine. Remove the dist. before you pull engine so it don't hit firewall.

Northern auto parts is one of the best and cheapest places for full master engine rebuild kits.

If you want ANY better performance than stock, then do not spend a dime on your stock heads. Just replace them with better heads. Heads is the #1 part for power. With performance builds I tell people to spend half of their engine budget on good heads.

Find a good machine shop in your area. Some do crappy work and some do great work. Talk to guys at local car shows, clubs, cruise ins, race tracks of any kind and see what machine shop most of them uses and go with that one.

You will need machine work done for a full rebuild.. Hot tank clean, bore and hone, remove old pistons from rods and put new ones one, install cam bearings, etc.

Get a number metal stamp set and number your main caps before you remove them.. Also number each rod beam and rod cap.. The main caps must go back in the same spot they came from unless your having the block aline honed and really no need in that.. Same with rods. Each rod must keep it's same cap on it and go back in the same cyliner it came from.

 

Night Rider - thank you for the feedback. I was reviewing this thread. Does it really list everything needed to swap?

https://www.thirdgen.org/forums/tbi/...-350-swap.html

You've convinced me to reconsider.

 

So I am ending up with a 350 but on a different path. I found a low mileage 350 crate motor a guy is selling complete. It is still installed and running. I am going to help pull. He is dropping something even larger in.

It is carbureted at the moment with an Edelbrock carb. Now trying to decide if I leave it carbed what do I need to do for everything to work.

 

Nice find. Leave it carb'ed for now and just get it in your car and have some fun. You can always swap to EFI later on if you want too.

There's really not a whole lot you have to do to swap in a carb'ed setup/engine. Your stock wiring harness will work. Do not cut any of the many un needed wires. Just tuck them away or remove the whole harness from pass. side fender and keep them in case you want to go EFI.

The carb'ed V8 only needs wiring for starter, alt, (A/C if your keeping ac on it), single 12 volt switched wire for large cap HEI dist., 12 volt switched wire for elec. choke on carb if it's an elec choke version, oil pressure sender, water temp sender, tach signal.

Your stock wiring harness starter, alt, oil pressure, water temp wires will work on the carb'ed engine.

Go off the windshield wiper motor for the choke wire, then find another source for the switched 12 volt for HEI dist. Myself, I like to run a larger gauge wire like 12ga. to make sure I get full amperage/voltage to my dist., so I just run my own 12ga wire from acc. port on front of fuse box, out through firewall and up to dist.

Your's being a '91 EFI car you will have an intake elec fuel pump. Keep it, use a mallory $90 high pressure adjustable fuel press reg on your fuel line under hood, turn pressure down to 5 psi and plumb a line from reg to inline fuel filter then to carb.

If you still want the lock up function of your 700r4 you can do the common brake light switch wiring mod and still have the lock up.. Or just run it as is with out the lock up function working. It will not hurt trans, but might kill a mile per gallon off your fuel mileage.

 

So I picked up the engine this weekend... helped the seller pull it out on Saturday and now I have it my engine stand.

I started preparing to pull the 305 and tranny today. I would like to keep the new engine carb'ed for now like you suggested but I started wondering what I need to do with all the "extra" emissions controls. I don't believe the car is old enough to ignore them from an inspection stand point...am I right? And what I'm getting at is I likely need to move some additional old parts to the new engine I didn't expect in order to have a place to connect some of the extra sensors but I want to do as little as possible to pass inspection.

Another question - it currently has the electric fan but I believe the previous owner ran a splice for it to be "always" on. Any issue with not putting the electric fan back on and instead mounting one to the engine? I only raised that because the old engine is already equipped.

I did notice the intake manifold on the new engine is slightly different than on the 305. Not that it surprised me that it's different but I did notice it's missing an accessory mount point compared to the 305. I expect to do a full run down once the old engine is out but I'm suspecting I need to replace/swap a few more parts than I expected.

But hey, I'm having a blast doing it!

 

I can't really help you on the inspection or emission test part of your swap. No inspections on cars in my state since the 60's, and only emissions test in the metro Atlanta counties. I live way out of those. So I have never needed to get one through testing.

A mech. cooling fan works fine, so does elec. cooling fans. All of the second gens and early third gens came with a clutch man on front of engine. I like elec. fans better as they take a little drag off the engine and can free up a little power, plus looks cleaner. I run the ford taurus 2 speed elec fan on my camaro with a on/off/on toggle switch to control it. I use a fan controler that auto turns on the ford taurus fan in my V8 s10.

I have wired many factory elec fans up to switched 12 volts when the stock temp switch for fan stopped working.