i am going to buy a set of heads, cam, and intake manifold later this summer when i get more money saved up. right at the moment i have a 79 chevy 350 engine with an edelbrock 600cfm carb and flowtech headers. soon after i get the heads and stuff on i will get a flowmaster 3inch cat-back and hedman or hooker headers. but for now im just wondering what would be the best head, cam, and intake combo for someone on a budget. im looking to spend maybe 600-700 bucks on heads but it will probably be off ebay. this will be a daily driver during the summer too so i dont want anything too extreme. and last, how much do most shops charge to install a cam? i will do the heads and manifold myself but i dont want to mess with the cam. how much of a power increase will i see with all of this? thanks alot

 

I think everyone on this board will agree that Vortec heads are probably the best bargain in the market. Id use Vortecs and a dual-plane Vortec intake. The best way to choose a cam is to call the manufacturer and tell them your specs, theyll give you the best profile for your combo. Expect to pay around $70/hr for the cam install, depending on where you live. Id expect mid-high 300s for hp figures, max...

 

i was thinkin about, iv seen a couple sets of slightly used vortec heads on ebay for like 300-400 bucks so thats perfect, mid 300 hp would be perfect, not too much for a daily driver and more than enough to smoke ricers and stangs! but with vortec heads i need a vortec intake manifold right? thanks alot for your help

 

Yeah, Vortec heads take specially designed manifolds to work with them. No worries, Edelbrock makes some manifolds to work with those heads. As for cam, keep it low on the duration for your daily driver. I would not go higher than 220* @.050 duration. That should also work fine with your stock torque converter, if you are auto.

 

My recommendation is vortec heads and Comp Cams XE 262 with roller rockers and a performer RPM cam. That should put you at over 350 hp. What gears are you running?

 

i dont know what gears im running, whatever the stock is for a 85 t/a, my tranny is mostly stock, its a 700r4 that was rebuilt with a corvette servo and a little stiffer 2nd gear

 

can anybody give me some info on removing the heads?iv never done it before so what should i expect? i know you remove the distributor, carb and intake manifold, headers, and do i then just unbold the heads and pull em off? how long does it usually take? day or 2?

 

I'd explain how to take the heads off but I don't have a lot of time right now. Just wanted to explain real quick that since you've never done any of this before, one of the most important things to remember (and most forgotten) is to drain the antifreeze!!! If you don't, you will spill it everywhere, including into your heads/cylinders. Good luck!!

 

You should give yourself 2 days or so to do the job so you don't have to rush.

Pull the distributor, carb, manifold, exhaust headers, remove the head bolts in a reverse tq sequence. Drain coolant. Clean the block to head gasket area very well and use a vacuum to get any pieces of gasket that may fall into the cylinders. Clean out any crude if you find some in the lifter valley. Its not a hard job, very time consuming though. Watch for ground wires and such on the back of the cylinder heads. Try very hard to replace everything the way you found it.

Also move the engine around until the TDC mark or whatever you have is aligned on the damper with #1 at TDC. Do this before you pull the distributor. Might make life easier when you are putting it all back together.

Gook luck

 

GM Vortecs are not the great deal they appear to be, they need alot of expensive work to be setup for performance. The best deal is the Pro Topline Vortecs, no machining work required and they have good springs. Much better then the crack prone stock crap.

 

Only if you plan on reusing the heads. One other thing to note: Remove the heads with the exhaust manifolds ON. Makes life much easier. Just unbolt the manifolds from the y-pipe...

 

i have flowtech headers on it right now, should i still do this? or should i just wait until i can afford some hedman headers and a full 3 inch cat-back before i start this stuff so then i can just put it all together at once? also when you buy a cat-back does it come with a flared end for the cat? i dont want that because i have no cat so im going to just clamp in a strait pipe.

 

You can't pull SBC heads with the exhaust manifolds on, like you can some other motors. 7 of the head bolts are underneath them.

When you're swapping heads, you're about 95% of the way to swapping the cam. Do the whole thing yourself. Don't take it all the way apart, put it back together, drive it down the street, and pay somebody else to take all of what you just put together back apart again. Even I can figure out that that's not very bright.

A set of used stock Vortecs can easily be a huge disappointment. They need some decent valve springs if you're going to put a cam under them that's anything better than that POS truck thing they come with. They'll only tolerate a little over .450" of valve lift before the retainers smash into the valve guides, so you have to be REAL careful about your cam choice. But if you get them cheap enough, you can do the mimimum possible amount of work to them, and sort of get by.

 

i have no clue how to change the cam, thats why im not wanting to attempt it, i thought u had to pull the radiator and all that crap and then id be lost after that, im clueless about it

 

Pulling a radiator is very easy. You would also have to take off the water pump, crank pulley, hamonic balancer, and timing chain. If you are not comfortable doing the work then leave it to a pro or maybe a friend that is experienced in doing engine work. If you have a shop do it, it will cost you though...

 

question: whats the best cam and head combo?
answer: my cam in your head!!

just kidding! However, your question is incomplete. You need to know the best Head/cam and INTAKE combo. You can have the biggest cam, the best heads but without an intake that can flow enough to support them heads, your combo would be mis-matched.

First make a final decision on what intake / injection or intake / carb that you are going with. Then, I could tell you what heads/cam will make you the most power.

 

im not exaclty sure what intake manifold in gunna use, maybe a weiand stealth intake or an rpm performer. i plan on sticking with my edleblbrock 600 cfm performer carb for now since it is fairly new,