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New to TGO, but not necessarily new to third gens. Though this is the first one I've owned. Growing up my mom had an 86 Z28 that I loved until it got sold around 2007ish.
Fast forward to 2013 and a friend of mine and I drove down to Galveston, Texas to pick up a 1985 Iroc-z. The car had been crudely painted and had a carbed 350 swapped in place of the original 305 TPI. He drove the car until sometime in 2014 when he was hit in an intersection by an f150. It dented the front up fairly good and also crinkled up the pass side rear quarter. He fixed the front as good as he could with a new fender. And not really anything happened with the car after that, so it mostly sat.
Fast forward to a couple weeks ago. He mentions selling the car for cheap. He gives me a number I can't refuse, so I buy it. She's rough in some spots and does have a little frame damage up front, but still drives pretty damn straight. I don't have plans to try and fix the frame damage or any of that right now unless I find a shop that's willing to tackle it. Otherwise, I'm just going to keep building on it until it breaks in half or I find a clean cheap RS to swap everything over to.
I only have the one picture of it right now that I took yesterday. Gonna try to clean the car up on Sunday and get more pictures.
Got her running again today and drove her around a little bit. As I expected, and was told by my buddy I bought it from, the 010 350 she's got now is just about done for as she sits. Now the plan is to take another 350 I have sitting in the garage and clean it up to swap into the car while the 010 block gets sent off for machine work. Not sure if I'm gonna have any more time to work on it this weekend or not, but here's a pic I took tonight.
Any modification plans for the new 350 being machined?
Well, it turns out that the 350 I had in the garage isn't usable in its current state. I got it from a friend who pulled it out of his '81 Camaro. He said he pulled it and didn't even look at it afterwards. It was put in by the previous owner and he knew nothing about it. It ran alright when he pulled it out but he said it would have low oil pressure at idle sometimes.
I pulled it out of the garage to look up the casting number out of curiosity and it started looking a little odd. Turns out that it had 2 different heads on it, one 882 and I think the other was a 991. The cam bearings and the main bearings were glazed pretty bad from heat soak. Both head gaskets were blown right in the middle, not mixing fluids or overheating, but causing compression leaks.
The 010 that I have in the car now runs good, but has a slight knock. I'm gonna pull it from the car soon and see if I can get away with new main bearings and a reseal, maybe throw a cheap cam in it and baby it around while I have the other engine machined to a 383.
Here is a picture of the rear most main bearing/cap. Disregard how dirty it is, it fell on the floor right before this picture.
04-13-2018, 02:58 PM
