Ok, so this is just a little "what if" question that my father and I have sorta been arguing about for quite some time now. It came up when I had what I thought was a 1985 L98 swapped into place of my L03. At the time I knew that the 85 vettes had non-roller cams, iron heads, and forged internals. I did not however realize that they came with perimeter bolt heads until after the swap. I never encountered any problem with that because my engine does in fact have centerbolts so the tbi manifold hooked up painlessly, leading me to question wtf my engine came out of (even tho I saw the car, hell I bought it off my neighbor who still swears its an 85). But all of that is besides the point. My dad claims that the only way a tbi will work on a perimeter bolt motor is with an aftermarket intake since the intake bolt angles change in 87? And I think there must be a way to use either an older intake since older base irocs came with tbi, or jury rig the tbi manifold to go onto the older engine. Im just wanting to know if he's right or not, since we'll be putting my old L03 into a k1500 farm truck with a detonated L05 unless there's a cheap way to use the 350 in our old scotsdale, just rebuilt about 2 years ago aapposed to the 305 being 20so years old...

 

The vettes kept the traditional intake bolt angle through 91, all others changed the 4 center intake bolt angles, around 87.
You can get a holley tbi intake that has the traditional pattern, or use a 4bbl. intake & tbi adaptor. I'd check e-bay & craig's for some used pieces.

 

no tbi's came on engine's with perimeter bolt heads. only on centerbolt. the intake can go to the old heads if the center intake holes are elongated. unless someone purchased a different intake manifold like stated above.

 

I found 2 from holley, $203.79. That's gonna be too much for dad to justify for his farm truck, he's just getting bored and wants a project and misses 4x4 and heat for feeding hos cattle lol. But this makes me wonder wtf is in my car bc I researched on vettes and yeah all of them had the old style intake pattern...

 

Only the center bolts need to be modified. Basically you just elongate the bolt holes to get it to fit. The only issue is that the bolts will not be level with the intake mounting surface, but otherwise it will still work.