My temporary motor finally gave up on me by pissing antifreeze all over itself from the back of the heads. I've been fighting cooling issues with it from the first day it got dropped in there and that combined with my growing need for more hp/tq/go-fast/fun level/potential to kill myself (you get the idea, typical camaro owner) has left me wanting more.

I've been reading a pile of posts in this forum looking for someone who's running something similar to what Im after, but I havent found any. I guess I will explain what I have and what I am after. Also what I have read/heard and hopefully by the time this thread finishes I will have a parts list I can go order up.

What I have is an early 70's vette block bored 30 over with 882 heads, mild comp cam, performer intake, headman headers, stock tbi unit (40lb/hr @ 13PSI injectors) and hypertech chip. This mates to a rebuilt 700R4 with shift kit and 2800 stall if I remember right and then out to a rebuilt 2.73 rear.

I am currently aquiring a T-56 with the 0.50 6th gear to put into the car. Im about 95% sure this is going through since I have been driving a wrx lately and I cant believe I went so long without a stick.


Idealy I want to be touching the 400hp mark with this new engine. However I will make tradeoffs if hp that high will force me to run anything other than 87 octane and less than around 20mpg highway. That has been my main problem when searching, I have found a few people in the 400 area but dont know what gas they run and what mpg they see with the thing.

Im pretty open as far as cost goes, right now Im budgeting for 5k for the engine and tranny swap.

If I can get help with deciding exactly what I need to buy I have no problems with rebuilding in steps and getting dyno as well as mpg results as I go along. I think it would be pretty neat and hopefully informative for other people since I should be able to show a pretty good spread of engine combinations as well as tuning.

To get started I was looking at this article here
How reasonable/useable is that?

Btw, this will be a Sunday's only project, if anyone has nothing better to do any local help with all this would rock!

 

i have the 882 heads and they came off my 74 350 truck motor, get rid of those and a set of decent heads

 

Chip tuning.....gotta have it.....did I mention your going to need tons of chip tuning........ohh yeah your going to need to do lots of DIY chip tuning, because the mail order stuff isn't going to cut it. Did I mention you........

Seriously though your going to need a 454 TB with the 90lb/hr injectors. Do a search for what TBI is capable of supporting. Also look up Ben73, he's the fastest NA guy on here at the moment.

 

Yea I knew tuning would be a big deal. I just bought the autoprom, G2 adapter, chips, and ordered the WB 02. I was heading to a friends to borrow a laptop when the car screwed up on me.

So I've done a little reading.
Ben73 runs 195cc AFR's on a 383 (dunno cam yet). He is well down into the 12's which means he is over 400hp unless his car is bare metal right?

As far as head choice for a 350 I came up with either the 180cc AFR's or the Performer Edelbrock 64cc heads. Is either of those a good choice? Is there other heads out there to consider?

Also do I need to check if my block has 4 bolt mains?

 

Your on the right track with tuning.

4-bolt block is not necesary for your power level, heck a set of studs in a 2-bolt will be good for over 600 hp.

Either of those heads would be good, if your wanting to save money you might look into the pro-topline iron lightings(800$). If you have the money you can't go wrong with AFR's.

 

I think I like the AFR's then, alum will save a few lb's (any idea how many??) and I dont mind paying a little more if they are worth it. One thing I am not sure about, what version would I need? I'm assuming its the 180cc version, but ontop of that what are the straight plug/angle plug/L98 plug/heat riser variations for?

 

Someone just told me putting aluminium heads on an iron block leads to warpage and leaks.. This isnt true right?

Also, what would be a good intake choice for the AFR's? I couldnt find anything about what Ben73 was using.

 

Ben73 is useing a crossfire intake, which uses two single bore throttle bodies. Any good carb intake will work fine, if you have room for a performer RPM I'd use it, if not look at one of the low profile single planes out there.

Aluminum does expand at a different rate than cast iron, but it's usually not a problem if you don't overheat your engine, the new "multilayer" gaskets out now, are supposed to help tremendously with this. In reality it's not that big of a deal, GM did it with the most of their LSx truck motors, and they get abused pretty regulary by millions of people.

 

i almost have the same setup as that chevy website.

i got the 355, flat tops, edelbrock air gap, edelbrock 750cfm, but trick flow heads 195cc ,and a slightly smaller cam, i will moving the cam up to about a .501 lift soon. so i should see bigger numbers