Ok, here it goes. Hopefully you all could be a great help to me, i am swapping my little 305 out and replacing it with a 360 (350 bored 60 over) out of a 69 vette. The motor has a whole forged bottom end and 327 ported and polished heads. The heads have bigger valves and stronger springs. I dont know exactly what kind of springs and valves but they are bigger than stock of course. My question would be if i could get this block to run with a TBI computer controlled unit?? Also were would i be able to get a prom chip for this kinda stuff?? I hope to have this motor up and running by May of this year, it is already put togather but i have to work out everything for the TBI swap. Is there an aftermarket TBI that i can actually find for a good price?? Also where can i put the Knock sensor at??

Thank you for any of your help and please also if you could help find me a nice size camshaft that i can run please let me know of one??

Lata
Dan

 

There's no such thing as a "Vette" block. The kind of motor you have is called a "small block Chevrolet". Banish the notion that some kind of magic rubbed off on it from having been wrapped in fiberglass for some part of its life. Nothing special got left behind, I can assure you, even if the "Vette" sucker line is true; about half of all the SBC blocks with casting dates before 1970 have somehow mysteriously become "Vette" motors, because the claim can't be disproved (or proved either for that matter), and some fool will come along and pay more for the tall tale than he would without the buzzword. As far as a block goes, especially if it's going to have a nothing but a stock TBI on top of it, either it is a 4" bore block, or it is not a 4" bore block. Even if it's fitted with 4-bolt main caps it won't make the slightest bit of difference in that application.

Same goes for the heads. Doesn't matter what size engine they came off of, except in certain circumstances. There were 327s that were everything from lowly grocery cart mules to 375 HP screamers. Some 327 heads are among the most sought-after stock castings, some are pure garbage.

One thing I can tell you about the heads though, is that very few 327s came with heads that had the accessory bolt holes in the ends of them. Without those, you will suffer the minor inconvenience of being unable to install a few insignificant things like an alternator and power steering. There's no way to reliably fake the holes. There's no material there to drill & tap because they didn't cast the bosses into those either; and there's nothing to bolt a bracket to, and not enough space to bolt it in there. You hear once in a while from people who say they made it work; but all the people who have ever told me that, also had trouble with belts slinging off, other bolt holes stripping, etc.

If this is going in a 87-up application, you'll need a flywheel or flex plate for a 2-piece rear-main-seal application. Your car has the late-model 1-piece setup. Not a big deal.

Post casting numbers instead of romantic-sounding irrelevant cliches, those are the best possible identification.

 

i know about the whole "vette" trick, i thought i would throw that in there just to be on the safe side with the other viewers...

As far as the price, that did not go up any, the price for the block already built (with a forged bottom end) only ran me 500 bux, i guess it helps knowing the guy huh??

one thing that i am most worried about is the knock sensor. I was told that i could put that just about anywhere on the block, but i wanted to see if i could a couple more educated opinions if you know what I mean.

So will heads from a 89 or newer bolt up to a 69 350 block, maybe i could find the right accesories off 350 heads ??

Once again thank you for all of your help..