DonutGuard

Okay, so I'm finally making some progress getting this car done. A couple months ago I pulled the engine and transmission out of an '87 Caprice 9C1. A roller cam 350 SBC with a Quadra-jet and TH700R4.

This past weekend I separated the engine and transmission, took off the intake and exhaust manifolds, valve covers, and cleaned it up as best I could with oven cleaner, brake clean, and a wire wheel, and I replaced the engine coolant plugs with brass petcocks. Got parts on order for it. When I'm ready, I'll paint the block a nice, light color to make spotting oil leaks very easy, and before it goes into the car I'll clean out the engine bay and paint it flat white for that same purpose.

Valve covers
Timing cover
Oil pan
Timing chain
Fuel pump
High volume oil pump
Roller tip rockers with pushrods (1.52:1 ratio)
Gasket kits
Flowtec shortie headers with crossover pipe
Various hardware (bolts, etc)

Keeping the stock cam, heads, and intake manifold. I figure it'll be plenty powerful enough for what will make me happy in the Firebird, and with the elimination of ALL smog control equipment, it'll definitely be more powerful than the 190hp 5.0L H.O. that the car came with originally. The reason for getting the rocker arms is mostly to do with just reducing valvetrain friction, the idea being to increase the engine's lifespan more than to increase power.

Stock heads are 64cc 1.94" intake 1.5" exhaust port GM P/N 14101083 (Since these aren't Vortec heads, it's probably got 165cc intake and 65-68cc exhaust runners)
Stock intake manifold is cast iron Q-Jet apparently found on Camaros as well GM P/N 14101076
Block is a 350 GM P/N 14893638
I can only guess at what the cam profile is, but I know it's a roller so it's probably 191/208 duration @0.050 and 431/451 advertised lift so relatively sleepy, but it's whatever.

Best guess for horsepower with the headers, roller-tip rocker arms, and smog delete is probably somewhere around 230-250 hp. Not ground shattering, but with a nice, smooth idle and plenty of idle vacuum, it'll be a nice daily driver that can pick up and go at low rpm.

DonutGuard

Oh, and before anybody mentions it... yes I would still rather be swapping in a Straight Six 250 for the sake of novelty

ShiftyCapone

iTrader: (7)

Sounds like a great basic build. Since you are going carb I'd stick a small cam in place of the peanut stick that's in there now. Even a stock Gen 2 LT1 cam would do wonders and still retain all the benefits of your goals.

DonutGuard

*EDIT*
Never mind I think I misinterpreted what you meant. You mean a small cam, but bigger than what's in there. Yeah, I guess I could probably do that if I wanted to, and since it's already a roller cam in there I could probably use the same lifters that are in there now, and from what I can see for just the camshaft itself they're only a few hundred bucks. The question is, how much benefit would I really see from that? The biggest thing I could do to improve performance while still maintaining the drivability characteristics I'm looking for is to increase compression, and since the heads I've got are already 64cc, the best thing to do would be to put flat top pistons in.

And that's the biggest reason why I'm leaving things the way they are. Once you start increasing power in one area, you think of ways you can squeeze out a little more power elsewhere. Before you know it, you've got a $2,000 shopping cart on Summit Racing on a budget half that size lol.

Don't worry, I've got one more engine in my garage that I'm gonna build for power. Not sure what I'll put it into, but I'm sure I'll think of something.

DonutGuard

Oh, something else I forgot to mention about the parts I got. I did get a 9 keyway timing gear set, so if I want I can advance the cam timing a bit to get a little more low end performance. Since the heads, cam, and everything are naturally set up for low-end grunt, it would only make sense to maximize on that and advance the cam timing by 2 or 4 degrees. Not much, but it's something. If that works out well, I may pull my wagon into the garage and put a similar set up on it because it absolutely SUCKS at idle. Damn thing can barely maintain a steady 10-12 inHg at 900 rpm. Hell, I may even put a new camshaft altogether in that one eventually.

That's by the way, another reason I'm staying away from putting too many performance parts in this build. The engine I bought for the wagon is a 383 crate motor from blueprint and it works well, it's great... it's just miserable to try and drive around normally. I think the idea they had building that motor the way they did was just so it could sound lumpy and aggressive, because it's just tame enough to drive around on the street, but the "seat of the pants" tell me that it wouldn't be that impressive at the strip. I honestly feel like my '95 9C1 Caprice is faster, and it's bone stock.