I have an 88 305 tpi and I want to squeeze the most I can get out of this motor. My goal with it would be mid-high 200s. Which is easily possible but the thing is I'm tired of carbs and there wonderful smells soooo I want to keep it tpi. What can I do to it to reeach my goal. I don't want to swap to an ltWAN or anything cause I would like to keep it with the original block. Another question is do vortecs bolt right up with the tpi manifold? Thanks in advance...

 

To answer one of your questions vortecs do not bolt up to your TPI base. You will have to get an Edelbrock Vortec TPI manifold to use the vortecs. That's what I'm using on my 355 build up.

 

Oh lord LOL sounds painful on the wallet

 

Nvm there not too bad. Cause I have the vortex and they do wonders on 2nd gens so I wanted to are how they do on a 3rd.

 

Anyone else have any ideas on what i can do?

 

there is a butt load you can do, the sky is the limit, or i should say, the depth of your wallet is the limit. how much are you trying to spend is the real question that needs to be addressed. you can go the route of "building hp" or "freeing up hp" or a lil of both. like a set of good roller rockers for example, will free up power being wasted by your stockers fighting friction, at the same time step up to a set of 1.6's for more valve lift and build a lil more hp. the main 2 compenents to "making" power are the heads and cam, also your most expensive route.

if you have a small pocket, try going with a larger throttle body with an air foil, cut open your stock ait box on the inlet side as much as you can and get a adjustable fuel pressure reg. and turn it up.

a good exhaust system will be just as important to get as much of the spent gas's out of the cylinders.

if you have a deep pocket, deff. wanna go the heads and cam route, along with aftermarket upper plenum, runners and base manifold. if the finances allow, have it all extrude(sp?) honed. and up the injector size. at this point you'll find it runs like crap, and you'll have to find someone to tune the computer$$$, while its on a dyno also$$$.

you do have modest and easy power goals. if i were you, id go for the free hp first, roller rocker, air foil, fuel reg. ect. you should be able to get where you want without have to do any major parts swapping.a friend of mine had gotten a book by TPIS made years ago about how to get more power out of his tpi motor going the routes i suggested for you. you should look into getting yourself one. i, unfortunatly, dont remember what it was called, but you should know it when ya read the discription.

hope this helps you more then confussing ya

 

I'll deff look into that book. But the reason why i thought of vortecs is cause i have a set and just wanted to see if there was any major problems or things to take care of with going the vortec route. What cam would work good with that kind of a setup? I'm not a complete noob to building motors, only to 80's fuel injection lol so don't worry that did help thanks.

 

im kinda a noob also when it comes to fuel inection, it can be pretty expensive stuff. another friend has about 60k in his 96 mustang cobra, 10k or so is in the stand alone management system and trying to tune it, in the end, he yanked out the stand alone and shot it with his 40 cal. and got some1 to rewrite the stock ecm so it would pass the obdII emissions requirements our state has.

Being my 84 is the first 3rd gen. ive owned im now seeing alot of people asking about cams that will work with computer controlled engines. im surrprised i dont hear more people talking about( im feeling like a broken record here) Cranes compu cam line of bump sticks( and yes they areback in businss, i just ordered my new stick today). they are supposed to be perfect for computer controlled motor. only down side is they aren't very big sticks. but a hella improvement over stock. i had a compu-cam 2030 in a carbed 305 and it ended up going 14.2@98mph with just had underdrive pulleys, an rpm manifold, holley 600, and long tube headers and exhaust in a 87 monte SS with 2.73 rear gears. (heavy car). and i know they had bigger profiles then the one i used.

as for the vortec heads, if ya have em, and they in good shape, id say deff. put them on. but a couple of key points first... like stated earlier, your gonna have to change the base manifold, the inner 2 bolts(i believe) for the intake are at a diff angle the the non vortec's.... and vortec heads really limit the amount of lift you can have.. something like 480 or so, im not 100% sure the #'s.... and if you are gonna change cams, let your machine shop change your springs and set the hights for the proper pressures the new cam is gonna require, you can waste power just by have to much seat pressure or loss power from not enough and getting valve float early.

and while your there( thats my expensive phrase) throw out those stock runners and get a bigger pair that matchs the ports better on the new base manifold...

 

The only factor is cams less than 112LSA are hard(er) to tune on a computer controlled setup which is why you see most " computer controlled " cams in the 112- 115 range

 

I'll look into the compu cam. And vortecs are 450 lift last time I checked. I was thinkvin of keeping it under there anyway cause my 2nd Gen had a vette Cam with like 450 lift and it was torquey as hell. Which I liked. Another thing it is my daily soo has to be some what driveable LOL so I don't wan to get too radical with the cam.

 

If thought about it for a while and am probably going the free up HP route see how it runs there and just chill with it for a bit... I don't want to rag on it too much. Maybe later on ill go heads and Camaro but for now it will be project daily driver LOL thanks for the help everyone.

 

I had a 91 z28 with the lb9 motor and I didnt have vortec heads but i did run the factory lt1 cam with 1.6rr and then ran the factory lt4 cam with the 1.6rr and had it tuned and it ran great, I could slightly pull on near stock l98's. Your motor is roller so for a cheap and easy cam look for a stock lt1 or stock lt4 cam. the stock lt4 cam should be on the limits of the vortecs though.