Well as luck would happen, my brother has been trying to sell his 5.9 R/T Dakota that he traded his 03 GT Mustang for. Well only serious guy he has had look at it has a 91 Formula with around 200K on it. My brother owes me money and is thinking of taking the Formula in partial trade for the truck and giving it to me for the money he owes me. It runs and drives without any real issues, other than the normal high mileage small block issues. It has a little blowby from the breather but otherwise runs well. I still have the 383 that was in my van sitting on the stand in my garage, and a freshly built 4L60E under the work bench. I still have my old trusty EBL classic sitting on the shelf in my garage collecting dust. What would you guys like to see me throw at this motor? What do you guys think, find a posi 3.42 V6 rear end, toss a S10 converter in the transmission, put a transgo 2-3 kit in it, Vette servo, full exhaust and maybe some 1.6s?? How do you'll feel about some drag radials, LCRA, and some upgraded shocks and putting the car on a bit of a diet. Think I can hit 13s with a high mileage TBI long block before I blow it up by putting nitrous on it in a quest for 12s?

 

Go for it man!!!

 

sounds like a good deal

 

good deal man. I wanna keep up with this if you do it so I can see what all is involved in running the 383 on tbi. I have a 92 caprice 350 sitting in the garage on a stand in which I have not started my build on.

 

If this does goes through, I'd like to see what you can squeeze out of the 305 w/stock throttle body injection. I just tore back into mine, pulled the turbo and converter off, and am starting over from scratch. Gonna see just how far I can take the 305 w/stock tuned port injection, ported heads and cam, naturally aspirated, before I slap a different turbo and converter back onto it again. Should definitely make for a very interesting Spring...

 

Finally a thirdgen! Aren't you a little too old for that?

 

Perhaps, but with a 2012 Titan for a daily driver and a long term project in the form of a 1968 Galaxy Fast Back with a big block 390 in it, I just want something to play around with that is simple and cheap to mod. I have the engine from the van, complete with TPI on it, a stack of TBI goodies and even a carbed 5.3 sitting around waiting for something.

 

Jokes aside, I find that cool and a thirdgen firebird formula to play with, ... lucky you!

 

So the car is in my posession...The factory exhaust catalytic converter was junk from the 210K on the car and the flowmaster had broken baffles. It now a custom exhaust on it. The factory head pipes were retained after the manifolds, but the pipes are bumped up to 2.5" similar to the 2.25" to 2.75" bump that GM did on the later model 5.7 2500 trucks and vans. From the 2.5 the pipes go into a flowmaster 2.5 to 3" merge and flow back via a 3" pipe to a magnaflow round muffler that is mounted sideways across the back of the car to a single 3.5" tip exiting passenger side rear fender.

The engine runs smoother than many newer V8s and still runs fairly strong but needs the upper end resealed badly and has a bad case of blowby. The breather filter was soaked in oil, the air cleaner housing was dripping with oil and even the TBI was fairly nasty. If I dump any more money other than a few gaskets in this engine it will be external parts that transfer over to a larger engine. Intake, 454 TBI, 1.6:1 rockers, headers, stuff like that.

The car came with plugs, wires, cap, rotor, pcv, fuel filter, and numerous other parts in the back seat. They have all been installed after returning the CR45TS plugs and picking up some CR43TS. Gapped them at .030" if anyone cares to guess why. I did a compression test and the worst cylinder sits at 170 psi with the best at 185. The leakdown test was less than perfect, but it has 28% leakdown past the rings in #3 with the rest hovering around 10-18%. At 210K the valve seal still seams solid. Far from perfect but she will work for my testing or die trying. I put a mechanical gauge on the oil pressure and warmed up at idle she holds 12 psi @ 600 rpm and 40 psi @ 2,000.

I had to fix numerous vacuum leaks and feel the intake manifold is actually leaking from the lifter valley side.

I will almost feel bad if I kill this engine trying to get to the 12s, but not too bad.

 

Get some pics up if you can Chris. It's about time you got a 3rd gen to play with...

 

I will try to get some in day light.

I also forgot to mention that if I open this engine up to reseal the top end, it may get either the Vortec 350 Roller cam or L98 Roller cam I have hanging around in my garage stabbed in it because it really needs a crank seal.

 

I hooked up the ol EBL classic this evening and started a little tweaking. Here is the problem I ran across with only an open element and single 3" exhaust.

55 lbs/hr @ 13 psi when run at the factory 11 psi provide only 50 lbs/hr each and top out around 191 HP. I guess I am going to have to break out those 61# 350 injectors sooner than later. I had to run the same injectors on the 305 HO in my van years ago.

I also need to verify the base timing is at the factory specified 0* or TDC setting. It seems to like a very low timing advance, even lower than stock.