So, years ago i bought a set of vortec heads and the SDPC manifold so i could use my stock tpi setup. I bought all this when i planned to make a 383. Could i just put the vortec heads and the manifold on my 305 TPI. Or should i just pull any 350 block out of the junk yard and throw this head/manifold setup on that???

 

Your best bet would be find a late model buildable core from a 96-99 pickup and use it.
It has roller cam, and will not have much wear from my experience. I've done couple like that, and just ringed and new bearings.
The 5.0 probably wouldn't have as much compression with the 5.7 heads.

 

As it comes out of the box, I wouldn't put that manifold on anything but a 305.
It doesn't flow as good as a stock manifold.

I had one flowed....226-237 on two ports.

https://www.thirdgen.org/forums/tpi/...pi-intake.html

 

X2 on that.

 

is that the same for the edelbrock highflow manifold.... cause it feels alot stronger than the stock manifold and my car pulls hard to 6 grand....

 

The regular Edelbrock TPI intake manifold is a better piece out of the box. It is also a better platform to make a high flow intake manifold out of. I often wonder why Edelbrock does some of the things they do. The TPI Vortec intake manifold is one of them. It would have been so easy for them to make a killer intake with the Vortec TPI.

 

ok, i wasn't aware that edelbrock also made a tpi vortec manifold. And the consensus is that that one is much better than the sdpc mani i have. My manifold is too restrictive for anything larger than a 305 and my vortec heads would lower the compression too much... great. So would my best bet be to just get the sdpc manifold ported and throw that on a 350 or 383 along with the vortec heads?

 

Edelbrock makes the Vortec style intake manifold for everyone including SDPC and also makes the only standard TPI intake manifold at this time as far as I know.

My reply was between the Vortec style intake manifold and the standard style TPI intake manifold. Hope I have clarified things.

 

thats good to know cause i was going to sell my lightly ported edelbrock highflow manifold for a stock unported SDPC manifold and get vortec heads.... i really was bout to get the afr's to go with my edelbrock manifold but i ran out of money on my new build and forced to use my stock heads for now.... got a forged bottom end 4 bolt 355, gm hot cam and a tpi ported edelbrock/slp combo.....

 

Thanks for the replies. So what you guys are saying is that i'm better off with the stock tpi manifold and stock heads than with the Vortec heads and SDPC manifold??? This is quite disheartening... Would it be worth having the SDPC manifold ported so i can have a high-flow manifold with vortec heads?

 

no what he means is that the edelbrock highflow intake manifold for standard style heads flows better than the edelbrock vortec manifold thats only meant for vortec type heads....