Ok I finally bought a 350 v8, from a corvette shop, it's was out of a 88 vette, which the body was totalled, I will post pics of it very soon.

Well the owner of the shop told me that the original owner put a holly 4 bbl carb on it and crossed the lines or didn't make sure that the lines leaked (something like that) well what happened was, gas went everywhere and the engine caught on fire, The valve cover seals melted. The intake manifold is still good, just needs to be cleaned up, he said there shouldn't be anything wrong with the block or the heads... those are my biggest worries..

Well my question is, what would u do to it before throwing it in my camaro... He is also selling me the th350 I believe it's automatic but I could be wrong the engine and tranny is still sitting in the vette... Would you think after getting a rebuild kit for it and maybe boring it .030 over would do it some good??? Would I have to bore it?? If the heads are in good shape where are some places I can get some decent heads...

Hope to get some help soon.... Want this in my car by february

Or would you say I am getting Jipped on the deal, 375 for the engine and tranny.... He said he would pull it...

 

price doesnt sound 2 bad assuming its in good useable shape, the fact that its coming out of a vette doesnt mean its anything special though, and that year vette would have had a 700r4 in it and defently not a th350 so thats not the stock tranny, kinda makes ya wonder about the engine.. assuming its low mileage and in good shape and only needs a couple of easy gaskets it doesnt sound too bad to me..... just look at what your getting first.. the dead giveaway would be the aluminum heads on it.. if its the stock engine it would be a l98 with aluminum heads wth center bolt valve covers.. if it doesnt have aluminum heads on it its probably not the origional block... it should also be a 1 piece rms engine just a few things to check out..

 

I believe it does have the center bolt valve covers....

 

The th350 is a automatic trans, 3 speed, no overdrive. If it was jsut a fire your longblock shouldnt need a thing. Clean the intake and engine, put some fresh oil, bolt everything up and fire it up.

I had a fuel line come off and burn one of my old S-10s to the ground. The "before the fire" pic is in my sig and Im posting the "after the fire" pic.

After the fire I pulled the engine, cleaned everything, put on a new carb and dropped it in another S-10....Turned the key RRROOOMMM....

 

yep, they're decent trannys, just nothing that would have been stock in an 88 vette, i personally have 4 of em, only one currently in a car.. they're decent trannys, pretty strong, but the lack of overdrive makes them kinda worthless on the highway if you have numerically high gears in your car..

 

so would it be better to find a 700r4???? I was looking in the trader today and found one for 120 bucks for a used one...

 

If you plan on doing any highway driving get the 700R-4

I had a th350 for a while in my S-10 and i was running 4000rpm with 3.73:1 gears to kind of keep up with traffic on the highway.

Think of it this way with a th350, my rear gears would act like 3.73 on the highway, but if when I swapped to a 700-R4 the overdrive made it act like I had a 2.61:1 gear on the highway, with the acceleration of 3.73's in 1st-3rd gears.

 

yeah I do plan on doing some high way driving, better gas mileage if I go with the 700r4 and less stress on the gears???

 

less stress on the whople drivetrain because of less rpms

 

ok well, I got the engine stand now, me and my friend are going to pick up the engine today.. I put the engine stand together... I don't see how that engine is going to be placed on the engine stand.... Am I giong to have to chain it to it or it's just something I am going to have to figure out through trial and error???

it's somewhat like a tripod on wheels that has an arm stickin' out with a deal on it that has 4 looking deals (not sure what to call them) sticking out of them, I am hoping my friend knows what to do, but if not any info would be great to know...

 

should have like 3 little arm thinggys that you can put bolts through, you bolt it to the rear of the engine like your bolting up a tranny to it..

 

I got 4 little arm thingy's... is that not the norm??? thnx for all ur help..

 

yeah it should b 4 i hit the key next to it.. they should loosen up so you can reagle em.. they bolt to the rear of the block where the tranny would mount up

 

that is what I have, what do yall think was it worth 300 bucks?? Needs cleaning but that is the first thing I will do, how about those great looking valve covers??? Alot of people are telling me to keep the original aluminum GM intake manifold... this engine originally stock was the cross fire injection system.. the previous owner had a 4 bbl carb on it, I was thinking about like a 650-750 carb... most likely edelbrock, what would yall suggest...

 

links dont work for me..

 

ok maybe this will work...

 

yep the side

 

the other side.... sorry I had to do this, but my whole link deal just wasn't working for some reason... as you can see where the spark plugs broke off when we has laid it down in the back of my friends truck,

 

is that suppose to be the 87 vette engine? its defently not.. it doesnt have aluminum heads on it.. wrong valve covers... and cross fire was from the much earlier 80's.. whats the casting number and date code off it? its on the rear of the block behind the drivers side head.. date code should be on opposite side or towards the middle.. pull a valve cover and get the casting num off one of the heads too.... its got the pass side dipstick so it defently looks like somethin from the 80's..

 

I was wrong about the 87 it was an 82, I must have been wonderin' off in space when he told me that and thought he said 87.... But he corrected me cause I still thought it was an 87 when I took my friend alex up there and told him it was an 87... so sorry about the misunderstanding of my part... yeah it's an 82..

Cross fire was first introduced in 82, and the vettes went from carbed to tbi...

 

first thing would be to degreese the hell out of it.. clean it up replace the nessicary gaskets clean the rust off and paint it.. might also wanna do a cam swap while you have it on the stand so you know what your starting off with.. or get the numbers off the cam in it now and figure out what it is.. a 750 vs carb would probably work well on it.. somewhere between 650 and 750 anyway... and yep 82 sounds about right by lookin at it.. is it completely stock except for the intake? and you could probably do better with an aftermarket intake.. stock power specs are 200 hp 285 lb ft torque...

 

I was looking at summit racing they had cams 312/322 duration for 79.99 and had a few others... would this be worth putting in, if the cam I currently have in there isn't any better??? it was the kit came with lifters and all.. I was reading on the history of the chevy small blocks and when chevy went to aluminum heads back in around 85-87 it gave it about 15-20 more horses... should I go to a junk yard and pull some heads off a 85+ small block???

no I was wrong about the intake, the intake is made by gm, its the original aluminum intake mani. it has GM 2F on the back side of the manifold and it has the fireing order on the front of it, I was looking it over and found a spot where it looks as if the original owner had used JB weld on it...

 

depends on what you wanna do with the car, what kind of induction your gonna run, and kinda intake etc to determine what would work best for ya

 

well, I want something that will run around the 250-350 hp and around 250-350 lb torque, I don't want it to be a gas guzzler... I basicly want it to where it will last me forever, sound good and run good, look good its going to be my daily driver...

since the stock specs were 200/285, wouldn't going to a edelbrock 750 with heddman headers on a y pipe with flow master exhaust increase that power by a good bit??? I still haven't tooken the valve covers off, to see if the original owner has bored it out any, if its STD then I'll most likely go about .030 or .020...

 

you would havta pull the heads off to measure the bore.. so you plan on rebuilding it? 300 is kinda steep for a 350 block that needs a rebuild but i've seen worse...

 

312/322 duration is a whole lot more cam then that engine can use. Post the numbers on the back of the block.

 

only numbers that I saw on the back, was 207 it was behind the flywheel, maybe I should have tooken the fly wheel off before putting the engine on the stand....

 

The list of unknowns on this motor are pretty high. First of all how long since the last rebuild. I may not be looking at the picture right but one of the exhaust valve stems looks like it has oil coating it. So it has enough miles to have leaky seals. Do all the cylinders have good compression?

You definently need to get the number off the heads and look them up on mortec.com. If they are 76cc smoggers, it would be a good idea to upgrade. But not a complete necessity. A cam with around 224 degrees duration at .050 and a good exhaust should get you your 250 hp. But to get to 350 hp you will need better flowing heads and probably more compression from smaller cc heads.

But bottom line is you need to know what you are working with. The part number on the heads is right on top once you pull the valve covers.

 

yeah before I start pull stuff off, I want to clean it up first so that none of the rust dirt dust etc etc gets inside it.

 

The casting number for the block is going to be right behind the driver's side head on that little landing. You can see where the numbers are on mine.

 

i wouldnt worry too much about cleaning it just to pull a valve cover off, its probably more grimey on the inside..... yup for casting number location see above, probably covered in greese, grab a paper towel.. its there,,, on the front of the engine on the little ledge by the corner of the water pump on the pass side are more numbers which include a partial vin of the origional car/truck
and there is a few more numbers and a suffix code.. Once you gettem postem up here

 

ok after cleaning around that area today I did find the casting numbers... I only found one set of numbers there was 14010207
I pull the valve covers off and found 462624... sorry it took so long, to get that.. the numbers on the castings were under about 1/4 inch of grease and dirt... Found some more number near where the water pump is suppose to be... it says 71102ZAK there is a smaller set of number below it I can't quite make them out they are very small, I will most likely end up taking a picture of them, with my roommates digi camera then blowing them up...

 

hmmm recheck the numbers, cant find a match for that casting number
closest i got is

14010201...82-85...305

and the heads

462624 - 462624.....75-86...350/400......76cc chamber, 1.72/1.5, 1.94/1.5 or 2.02/1.6 valves

basically large chamber low proformance smogger heads

for the one by the water pump clean it a lil better and recheck.. should be some more numbers/ letters to it.. the small one is probably the vin of the origional car/truck

 

Ok I throughly cleaned the numbers with some simply green and a tooth brush and borrowed my roommates hallogen work lamp to help bring the numbers out more... so here they are correctly....

alright on the casting near where the tranny hooks up are 14010207

The first larger set of numbers near where the water pump is pos to be is V1102ZAK

Now the smaller numbers below that is 1A5405418
I am guessing one of them is the partial vin I am not sure..

 

14010207...350...80-85...2 or 4 bolt main

I dunno about the others

 

ok what you got there according to that information

Casting num = 14010207 350 80-85 2 or 4 bolt main

V1102ZAK = V = Flint, michigan 11= November 02 = 2nd
Suffix code ZAK =1980 ZAK 350 a/t, L48 8 190HP 4-bolt main Vette

so basically whatcha got there assuming its bone stock is a 350 cast on November 2, 1980 in the Flint, Michigan plant. It SHOULD be a 4 bolt main block. The rpo code for this engine was L48 and it was rated at 190hp and ran a 4 barrel carb. So it sounds like a good starting point..tear it all down have it cleaned and check for cracks, determine if it needs to be bored or not or if a simple hone will do the trickand start puttin her back togather.. assuming you can just hone it you could just rering it have the crank machined have everything balanced and slap-er back togather... If it needs to be punched go as small as possible so it'll have more rebuilds left in it.. then decide what the purpose of this engine will be.. if proformance is in mind may want to consider some decent pistons while you have it apart.. it probably has dished.. dont skimp on the short block.. build it right.. lots of people slap parts on stock blocks and make lots of power.. but it doesnt last.. some will argue i know.. just my .02... oh yeah and if you can afford em some arp mainstuds and fasteners should keep it all togather for ya very nicely

 

yeah I bought this book "How to rebuild you Small-Block Chevy" by David Vizard. I didn't know it but when I was thumbing through it this morning it's has a page for Block Casting Identification. Pretty Sweet huh? it's just tells me 350 80-84 4 bolt main. Kinda glade I bought this book..

 

well technically that casting number was assigned to 2 and 4 bolt main blocks, im assuming its a 4 bolt block because the suffix code identifies it as being from a vette. Might wanna start up a new thread on the head casting numbers but from what i can tell they would make nice wheel chocks or door stops, but i dunno maybe someone has had some luck with em?

 

1A5405418

1=Chevrolet
A=1980
5=assembly plant...can this be an "S"??, S=St. Louis
405418=Last 6 numbers of VIN on Dash.

 

watch out what you do with a camshaft change,actual compresion ratio of those engines are actualy around 7.8 to 1 the cam thats in it is designed with very little overlap to help low end performance due to the low compression..... put some new flattops in it and it will give you around 9.to 1 if you go .030 over..
had one of those in a 80 z28 and made the cam mistake back around 1989 when i was in high school.......turned it into a total pig......man did i feel like an idiot!

 

starting new thread.... 350 vin help