hey im new to the board and recently purchased a 1986 trans am with rod knock. i was told that it has a 87 350 tpi motor in it. a friend of mine told me that in 87 the valve cover was switched from perimiter bolts to center bolts. mine has perimiter. i have been told that there is a block code that will tell me if its a 87 block or not. but im not sure were its at.

is it possible that a tpi intake was put on the 86 motor.

thanks for the help im advance

 

TPI was installed on F-body's from 85-92 so it is possible it could be factory. You could have a 350 block with older style heads and or the previous owner could have also used the 305 heads on the motor. To find out for sure I think the numbers are on the back of the block where it bolts up to the transmission on the driver side. Also if it is an 87 block it would also say 5.7L or 5.0L.

 

any idea what numbers i should see for which block? some one told me there was a write up on this but i have searched for over 2 hours and cannot find it

 

the numbers are on the rear drivers side of the block on the shelf that the transmission bolts too. if the block is a 305, it will say 5.0 and if its a 350 it will say 5.7. there should also be a series of numbers that you can cross reference on mortec.com to see what year the block is from. you can also look under the valve cover and look for a chain of numbers, then go to mortec.com and cross reference the numbers with the SBC head casting #'s portion to determine where they came from as well.

good luck!