I HAVE JUST BUILT A 383 SHORT BLOCK. GONNA PUT IN MY 83 TRANS AM. I WANT FUEL INJECTION. ANY PROVEN COMBOS ON HEADS, HEADERS, INTAKE AND FUEL INJECTION KIT?

 

There are a ton of dyno-proven combos. It just depends on what your horsepower target and your budget are.

 

People will be ALOT more inclined to talk to you IF YOU QUIT SHOUTING AT THEM.

Engine? Budget? Purpose of car? Gears? Transmission? Tires? Suspension work? LS swap?

 

Car will be daily driver with trips to the track about 2 times a month. Block is from 99 Tahoe. Don’t really have a budget. Transmission is T56 and geared 3.73. No suspension upgrades yet. I’m looking for compatibility of top end components without any fabrication. Looking for around 500hp. Thanks

 

What pistons are in it? Are you willing to put decent gears in it? Those are the stock gears for some 305 cars (mine for example) and lots of T-56 cars (98-02). They're not really "enough" for a T-56 (speaking strictly as someone who has one), most of them anyway, because the ratios are so close.

A good, not "infallible" or "absolute" but at least "good", is that you can make roughly 1.25 ft-lbs of torque per cubic inch on pump gas, or maybe a little more if you're REALLY good at it, in any reasonably streetable configuration, from ANY motor, assuming it's WELL BUILT, at its peak torque RPM, whatever that is, totally N/A. (obviously if you have race gas, or nitro, or a 6-71, or don't care about daily driving, or ..., you get the point, you can get more, but for the purpose at hand) For a 383 that means you can expect around 480 ft-lbs of torque at its peak. Since HP = torque x RPM ÷ 5252, that means that to get 500 HP, you need to be making peak torque somewhere near 5500 RPM. Not necessarily "at" 5500 RPM, but that's going to be the RPM range you'll have be working in. Like, you might make peak torque at 4800, and just barely crack 500 HP at 6200, or some such. Details will vary but that's the framework you'll be in.

That'll take a cam with around 240 - 245° of duration on the intake, in yerbasic N/A small block Chevy. Ever driven a car like that? Are you interested in daily-driving such a car?

Why 500 HP? How bout a blower? What's your budget JUST FOR FUEL? How fast do you ACTUALLY want to go? Are we class racing here? Merely bracket racing? What's your budget? GOTTA have a budget: you can blue-sky, or even black-sky, all day long, but if you don't have the cash to back it up, it's all mental self-pleasuring (self-abuse), and inherently worthless. Gotta be able to spend what it takes to execute whatever you "plan", in some reasonable (let's say, 3 yr horizon) kind of time frame, otherwise you'll end up buying a bunch of crap, it'll sit around until it's obsolete, and you'll end up selling it all to some Greater Fool at 25% of what you paid for it, just to cover your bus fare in the meantime.

Get real. It'll help zero in on what to do.

 

It’s a Forged rotating assembly. It’s good for the abuse. When I say I don’t have a budget, that’s what I mean. I’m not looking for help with making the horsepower. I’m looking for someone who knows what headers will work with what heads that will work with what intake that will work with what fuel injection kit without a bunch of fabrication or structural modifications. The 3.73 is plenty enough for the T56. I’ve been using it a couple of years.

 

Does not compute.

 

I'm just going to assume you do need help....

Do you have a stock hood? Wondering how much hood clearance we're dealing with.

The best intakes are going to be carburetor style and they can be adapted to throttle body fuel injection (wet flow), or multi-port fuel injection (dry flow) with an LS1 style mono-blade throttle body. That's going to be difficult with hood clearance though. The other choice is a factory style longitudinal intake but most those usually suck and will clip off the power up top. Lingenfelter (Accel Super Ram) is probably one of the top choices in that department, but you might spend upwards of $4K for the privilege to close your factory hood. The choice is yours.

Put your money in the heads and pay for professional porting, valve job, chamber shaping. This is the secret sauce to getting enough flow to make the power with a smaller cam, and keeping enough air velocity to preserve drivability. Mamo Motorsports is really good at making drivable combos that make a lot of power. Lingenfelter was really good at it too, but not sure if they still have the old pros on staff that developed their SBC programs.

Cam is last decision after heads and intake. Pay the extra $50 for a custom cam.

Long tube headers work best (look at Hooker Super Comps) but won't be able to keep catalytic converter. Long tubes run down the trans tunnel and don't follow stock exhaust routing. Use a Flowmaster merge to bring it back into a 3.5" or 4" pipe over the axle. Mufflex makes a nice selection of rear exhaust to finish it off. If you want stainless then take a look at Hawks Motorsports (made by Stainless Works). If you want to keep the cats then you'll need shorties or mid-length headers. American Racing Headers is good stuff. As far as muffler, don't waste your time on anything except straight through. You can have a full body muffler but you want to be able to look through it from end to end. Chambered and turbo mufflers (internal S shape) are more quiet but the loss of power is substantial. Everything is being pushed through a single muffler so you gotta choose well.

For engine controller, one of the Holley ECM's is going to be the most versatile. You can even use an LS1 ECM with coil per plug setup (no distributor) if you plan ahead and make provision for the cam and crank sensor. Never done it but I think it's pretty straight forward by installing a later Vortec front engine cover and cam sprocket.

 

Lots of good info. Yes I have my stock turbo hood and I would love to use it. The stock intake has right at 8 1/2" from bottom of base to top of air cleaner. Plus there is about 1 5/8" room in the hood. Let me simplify my question, being text does not have context. I own a 16 bay repair shop and have been doing this a long time. I have over half a million dollars in diagnostic equipment and tools and have 7 techs. So when I say I don't need help with the horsepower, I'm not being arrogant or pompous, I just mean that I will work that out as I go, and choose cam last. When I say proven, I mean proven that the parts will bolt up without multiple trips to machine shop, cutting and welding, and be compatible. I should be right at 11 to 1. So let me tell you what my plans are, and I would love your opinion. I'm looking at AFR 1095-716 heads and I'm really interested in the Edelbrock pro-flo 4 XT style kit. I don't mess with headers at the shop, nor do I have ANY experience with them. So I'm having a hard time matching some up to the heads, and I would love to use long tube, but I have read that it is a nightmare. I don't have cats now, and as for the muffler I was planning on using the Quick time 13300C. My shop is a high production, primarily STOCK repair shop. We have installed a few aftermarket fuel injection kits, but not many and I have NO experience with Edelbrock XT style kit, but if my math is correct, I should have the clearance to keep my hood. So any input would be great!

 

Proflo xt may fit, might need ported to make the hp

miniram will fit and works well but it can be finicky to tune idle and part throttle mixtures in closed loop

i would suggest holley hp efi for total control. Go crank trigger and 1x cam sync with ls coils for sequential

cam, hyd roller in the 230-236 deg duration range will be fine. Mid high .500’s lift

heads if you go afr get the 210’s non comp port. Cheaper and as good as the 195 comp package

or talk to Chad Speier on a set of small bore 205 cc that he has on his 530+ hp 379 motor. His combo is what u want

 

Thanks! Who is Chad and how do I reach him?

 

Google his name you’ll find his website and heads but he is a member here u can pm him

 

Just an idea.... Everything you're going to modify or change with this build is the same stuff you would do with an LS swap. It's super duper ridiculous easy to hit 500 horsepower with an LS3 and it will drive a whole lot better too.