Yup. You read that right. I don't have a third gen, and I don't plan on buying one. I signed up here, primarily for information on a carb to TPI swap onto a 1977 SBC 350. Will also be cruising the classifieds for parts I may need.

I drive a 1977 Chevy K20 (3/4ton 4x4) single cab longbed. Has a mildly built 350, 4 speed, d44 front, 14 bolt rear with 4.10 gears and 37" tires. Truck is beat to hell, but it sure does run good. Its my daily driver and my tow rig for my rock crawler.

As it stands right now, the carb works fine, i get decent fuel mileage, and the truck is super reliable. But, at the same time, i'd love the ease of having a fuel injected car. No messing with a choke cable, no pumping the gas pedal to start the car, etc.

On to the good stuff... Engine specs and pics of the rig...

Engine is a 350. Was rebuild in 07 with edelbrock 64cc aluminum heads. Edelbrock aluminum intake. Edelbrock 1405 600cfm carb. Hedman longtube headers, and a Performer Plus 2102 cam.

A few good parts for better HP, but with such a mild cam, I'm not putting down the power that I theoretically could, with the other parts. I'm considering picking up a Comp Cams "Extreme 4x4" cam to throw in it, because its supposedly a good towing cam. A lot like an RV cam, except with a little more "ooomph" to it.

On to the pics...

 

You can certainly swap it from carb to tuned port and its going to be some work.

The first thing is you are going to have to install in-tank fuel pump(s) and get all the fuel plumbing sorted. I had an 85 Silverado and it had dual tanks, so I am assuming yours does too.

Then you need to get an early style TPI setup to fit your heads. A 1986 and older setup should work. The 1987 and later style had the centerbold heads so the bolt holes on the lower intake manifold are going to be at a different angle.

You can pick mass airflow or speed density. Make sure you figure out how you are going to run this setup. Are you going to customize a stock harness or run a standalone harness like a Painless setup?

You should probably look at the Engine Swap section where people went from carb to TPI to get some ideas.

I have seen some TPI setups in the local craigslist classifieds as well.

I really dont know if you are going to be able to get that 4x4 to go that fast, I pass jacked up trucks on the highway all the time in my Camaro.

 

Definitely not trying to get it going fast. At 75mph the truck gets the shakes from the tires not being balanced. I'm just working on getting the engine towing a little better than it does now. The truck actually tows pretty darn awesome, but I think fuel injection would be even better for changing conditions, cold starts, etc.

Ideally, once I get all the TPI stuff squared away, I'm going to pick up an 80s suburban to swap all this stuff into. So I won't have to haul a tent when I go offroading!

 

The TPI definitely makes some good torque.

Depending on how much tuning you want to be doing, I would research if the cam you want to swap out is computer compatible or not.

I eventually want to get a 1995 Chevy Pickup with a stepside shortbed and convert the TBI to a TPI setup. I think that would be a lot of fun.

 

What I'm worried about, is even with the right cam, it won't run right with the stock computer. I don't know what the mod limit is, without having to worry about tuning. Plus, wouldn't I need a computer from a vette to make it work right with my sbc 350? IIRC, the camarobird TPI setup is for the 305.

 

As long as the camshaft is computer compatible it should be close enough to run correctly. When you say 4 speed, are you talking about a 4 speed manual tranny?

You most likely will need to get your feet wet in tuning. You need to start with a 350 BIN from a Camaro/firebird and enable the 5 speed switch.

In 87, the Fbodies got the 350s in TPI form, so there are lots of BINs out there to play with. The Fbodies got the iron heads and the corvettes got the aluminum heads, but they were 58cc aluminum heads. Your setup is somewhere in between since you have 64cc heads.

The 89 ARAP bin is really popular but has a ton of timing in it.

IIRC, the mass airflow systems on the corvettes and the Fbodies had the same ECM, not sure about the 84-85 bastard years. 1984 was first year for vettes, and 1985 was first year for the Fbodies.

Tuning isnt all that bad. Both my TPI cars were tuned by me.

 

Camaros & 'birds came with 305s & 350s. 305s could have had T5s or 700R4s, 350s had 700R4s, no T5s.

A MAF will be a little easier to tune & more receptive to mods, due to the MAF doing some self-tuning.

With any of the combos, you could put in a LS1 PCM & do laptop tuning, to do away with having to burn chips for each change you had to make to get the tune right, or for future changes. Just a few keystrokes away for the LS1 PCM vs burning a new PROM for the TPI ECM.

 

yes, my 4speed is a manual transmission. SM465 specifically. What specific parts or software would I need to tune a PCM?

 

It really depends on which setup you are going to run. If you are running a modified stock setup or a standalone harness.

If you were to run a stock MAF setup, you can use Tunerpro for the software and get something like a G1 adapter from Moates with a ZIF socket and a Burn2 and some flash chips. You will probably want a ALDL cable and a laptop to datalog and play with.

I really dont know how you would go about doing that because I havent really looked into the swap into a different car.

There are a few standalone systems out there that you can run as well.

 

If the stock MAF computer can't handle the few mods that have been done on my truck, I will probably wire in a MegaSquirt setup and a wideband o2 sensor. That gets into a little more work than I would like to do, but sometimes, spending extra money is the better way to do things.

How can I found out if the cam I'm looking at is compatible with a computer? For some reason, I kinda figured those would be completely separate from each other.

 

Yeah, I couldnt remember the name of the system. My ex roommate was always talking about Megasquirt this and Megasquirt that.

Call comp cams or the manufacturer. They know their cams really well.

 

I submitted an onilne request for their recommendation of cams. Pretty lengthy request form. so hopefully all the little details will help them them me purchase the right cam. Of course, I still need to source mass air TPI parts.