First time posting. I picked up a 92 Firebird. Looking to use the car mostly for 1/8 mile bracket racing. Sportsman (7.50 or slower, or the real goal is 7.0 index.) if possible, we would like to keep the car street legal to occasionally drive around town. Any highway miles would be less than 20 minutes. If it proves to be too much of a hassle, we will just trailer it to the track.

I’m on the fence about which motor. There are some BBC around town that can be picked up relatively inexpensive as people are going to LS swaps. I would prefer to keep the car as simple as possible. Carb, headers, straight pipe, etc. Heat / AC will be removed although I like the idea of a changing system and power steering.

my plan includes a built th350 and a 9” rear end.

I read a lot of posts about swapping in a Vortec, but I’ve tried to buy 5-6 vortec’s in the last 2 weeks and they keep getting sold out from under me. A lot of the sticky’s are 10-15 years old, so I’m looking for some newer info / ideas. I’m starting to feel like maybe I should just try a BBC.

any advice or insights are greatly appreciated. My budget for the whole build can be 10-15k, but I realize it may be cheaper to sell this and buy something TK.

I’ve built and raced bikes for years, but cars are new to us.

 

In 2023 I'd do some kind of LS swap. Since you're not trying to go just super fast, shouldn't be too hard to start out with an old truck 6.0 or the like, get some better heads (243s for example), and build it up from there.