Hey guys.. just got back from deployment with the Marines.. have a little cash and am finally starting a swap in my 92 z28. It was been sitting for 6 years now waiting for me to show a little love haha. My question is that I am wondering first of all how strong stock 700r4s are and how long they can sit for before going bad. I was also wondering if it would be smarter to send my trans to a shop to get rebuilt or just buy a new one.. Im a Lcpl so I dont have much $$ trying to get the best bang for my buck as I can. Any other advice would be greatly appreciated!! Im excited to start this project and have spent countless hours reading the post here on thirdgen.org.. what a resource! Anyways.. I look forward to hearing your $.02

 

The 700-r4 was designed by GM when they were on crack. They need to be upgraded to handle any kind of power. It shouldn't go bad from sitting but if the condition isn't known it may be a good idea to have it checked out.

 

so what do you consider.. any amount of power?

 

ok im going to put my .02 cents in.
first what kinda swap are you going to do?
second the 700r4 is a great tranny and a lot of drag cars use it and it was the back bone to modern over-drive transmissions.
i have one in my 88 TPI iroc and i love it besides the tranny bellhousing.
im going to go with a jw ultra bell and ill be in good shape.
now if anybody wants to talk bad about a tranny in general i think the t5 would be on gm's crap list of transmissions. they didnt offer a t5 in the 350 irocs because it couldent handle the horsepower or the torque that the 350 was putting out. and if it was a crappy transmission how come TCI, B&M, DR. EVIL and monster transmissions, build 700R4 transmissions?
you dont see companys making T5s do you? or other blunder transmissions.
nobody would spend the time or money to build a transmission that didnt hold power and or duribility.

 

yeah.. thats what I thought.. seems like alot of people like them.. as far as the swap.. not 100% sure yet.. when I bought the car the guy said it had a vette motor in it, I thought he lied to me for sure until I just noticed last night that my alt. bracket is the same as vette l98.. im in camp lejuene but I get to go home soon and am going to pee myself if it really is an l98.. if its not I am going to do an l98 swap with a little engine work "head,cam,tpi work. If its it really is an l98 I am either going to build it into a 383 or forge it out for later supercharging.. speaking of which.. of read alot of posts saying that tpi sucks for applications over about 350 hp.. what if theres forced induction? does that cure the problem? Well I gotta cut this off early.. being called away.. look forward to hearing back

 

Ok pros and cons of TPI, More pros than cons.
here is what i have,
i have a gm performance crate 350, tpi, LT1 injectors, custom chip, no smog, no egr, headers, dual exhaust, and enough power to break bell housings on transmission.
ok the pros are fuel economy, im putting out 320 horses and 400+ ft lbs and im getting 30-34 MPG on the highway and about 20 in town, up to 24 if i keep my foot out of it, im running a 700R4 and 2.73 rear gears. its a fun car and its not slow. my iroc is a true L98 TPI car.
i have my block and heads at my parents house. (Build planning in progress)
ok pros and cons of the L98, ive done my research and building a L98 can get expensive, and the l98 is a 2 bolt main block. so outcome needs to be kept at around 450-500 hp tops and no more than 500 ft lbs, otherwise it would be an expensive fireworks show with pistons and junk flying everywhere. but the L98 is a roller cam engine = less drag and quick power with cam upgrade. to see if it is a L98 look on the code list in the console, look for a L98 if not there, look at the vin, the 8th digit should be a 8 if not then its not a true l98 car and the easy way to tell is to take the intake off and look at the lifter valley, if it has a lifter brace down the middle holding the lifters in place then it could very well be a l98.
supercharging is cool and such but expensive because u need to build on a strong bottom end and top end and then blue-print the engine, its the only way to make sure u get more than 10,000 miles out of it. my engine in my camaro right now is ready to supercharge and it has a boost frendly 8.5-1 comp ratio. all thoes things in mind. how much money do u have to work with? are u looking for a sunday driver or a everyday driver with some punch? are u willing to put 2 grand in it or 5 grand in it? it takes money to boost and less to make horses. the l98 heads are awesome heads.
and if the crank is in good shape keep it, i always replace everything else when i rebuild. i take the crank and have it turned, but gm makes a awesome crank. back for the third gens all of the engine internals were made to handle 500 horses, yes 500, in all engines available for the third gens from the 2.8 v6 to the L98 350. granted u can boost, shave heads and do whatever to get them to put out 500 is cool by gm. they just had the building blocks for better performance. so any other questions about building it or ideas or input ask away.

 

Hey.. sorry my internet took a dump for about 24 hours.. you can seriously get the kind of mpg? Im not looking for this to be a commuter car by any means but it would still be nice to get decent gas mileage.. as far as money.. I think I will be able to spend about 4k on just power train kinda stuff.. not sure how my old 700 r4 will stand up to any power.. it has about 120k miles and has been sitting for 6+ years untouched.. in a garage. I was looking on ebay and saw that you can get a performance trans for about 1k.. not sure if it better to do a performance rebuild on the one I have or just buy a new one.. not really sure how much money that stuff is or what all you need to do powertrain wise if your going to upgrade your motor.. I would like this car to be an every day driver.. with a punch.. I would love to get about 350 to the wheel or so. If I do have an l98 im assuming that wouldnt be all that hard or expensive.. still wondering what engine work I should do.. whether to build a decent 350 or go with a 383...honestly dont know to much about 383's but they seem pretty sick. I want to my car to be more of an auto cross car than a drag car and it seems like that is what 383's are for the strip.. am I wrong??

 

oh yeah keep in mind that im a marine and dont drive alot at all.. so I can deal with this being a little mean.. the only time I have really drive it to go home on liberty which is about 6 hours away up I95, that only happens about every 2 months

 

cool, ok it is a tpi car right?
but yea im getting awesome gas milage.
well 4 k will be a great amount to work with.
i would suggest getting a crate engine and ill look around for you and ill tally up how much it would cost to rebuild. pros and cons of crate / rebuild
1. crate = easy. rebuild = pain in *** but worth the effort.
why its a pain is because u have to get it line bored then get the crank turned and get the cylinders bored and honed and have them professionally cleaned and or hot tanked. crate u drop it in have ur chip tuned and drive on.
2. building it can get fun and u feel really accomplished in the end. like me i love the fact i built my engine and i would be happy to help build it.
i live in nc too.
i wouldent buy a tranny from ebay! i would get one from summit racing or jegs performance. because if u have a problem they will get it taken care of right away and cover shipping costs. other ones may take a while and may want u to pay for shipping and what not.
but ill see what it would cost to build it and put a well matched tranny.
4 grand will be a good ammount to work with and if u want it built u can spread parts out over time as u need them. have u ever built a 350?
if u want help id be glad to build it and i can blue print it for you and it can be pretty bad ***. but ill do some shopping and see what i can come up with. plus i have some good machine shops up here that do engine work as far as boring and honing. but ill get back to you soon. if u want to correspond by email my email is joseph@kenetx.com
glad to be helping a patron of our country!
Semper Fi

 

wow.. I just spent forever writing a post and lost it.. so here goes #2 which is gonna be alot shorter haha. Yes my car is tpi. I would love any help/expertise you are willing to offer. There is a machine shop, auto hobby shop, body shop, paint booth, and also a fabrication shop. They have pretty much all the resources I need for this project for cheap!! I want to do as much of the work as I can with my own to hands.. I dont like it when poeple have sick modded cars that they paid lots and lots of money for someone else to build. Not to interested in a crate motor. I will keep you informed with what I am doing.. not quite sure of the timeline and I am guessing I will have to wait to buy parts due to lack of $$.. I have no problem using mostly used parts as long as there in working order.. I actually like the idea alot.. I know it will be a decent amount of time until Im ready to do the engine.. but I also know that its important to have a solid plan and keep to it.. do you know alot about engines? I dont even know what I want to do for sure yet.. most likely just a 350 build. I think a 383 is out of my price range for now and I heard they run crappy with a tpi setup. Ill keep you informed.. and thanks a million for any help your willing to offer.

 

I give a big military discount. 20%-thanks for everything.
the 700r4 should be freshened up with at least external seals if sitting for a while. also a filter wouldn't hurt either.
the 700r4 is a nice transmission stock IMO when it isn't being beaten on. For more power/beatings upgrades are usually required or poof.

 

your going to need a new tranny and like ive been having problems with my 700r4 case to save yourself the hassle of dealing with that crap id just buy a whole new tranny. u can get a tranny and 2000 stall torque converter for about 1500 bucks from summit. and its rated to 450 hp.
4 grand will get u a awesome engine and tranny setup.
i can help with cam selection and other msc parts.
ive been building 350's since i was 14. ive built around 15 engines.
ranging from 300 - 600 hp.
with 4 grand we can probably get about 300-330 hp.
as far as buying parts n what not you have to rip apart the engine and have it cleaned bored and have the heads hot tanked and shaved.
if your engine only has 120,000 miles on it you should be able to just have it bored about .010 over and the same with your cam and main journals.
its a standard size and it wont hurt gas milage too bad. when u get into .020/.030/.035/.040 ur talking about big difference in getting 30 mpg to 20-25 mpg. i wouldent go more than .20 if i had to.
ur heads id have .010 thousands shaved off just to make them true.
so the start is to pull the engine and rip it down and then go from there.
because u cant order parts till you have everything checked and dementions change after you have the block and head work done.
and as far as using the stock crank. eagle makes rotating asemblys with cranks under 800 bucks and it saves time with crank issues and they are balanced so u will gain a lil bit of power there. and if i were you, id call up summit racing and see if they offer a military discount.
i bet they do.
but ive got ur hook up for chip work. are u planning on running duals or single to duals out the back?
if you run duals it will let your engine breath better and pick up a few extra horses. let me know what you think

 

Yeah that sounds good.. I sill need to find out what motor I have. I am honestly considering an LS1 swap... its hard to beat 375hp+ bone stock with tranny and everything else for about 5k. How much for chip work? and about exhaust.. I need to keep it smog legal so I dont think I can run duals.. how much more power for 1k more?

 

"I give a big military discount. 20%-thanks for everything.
the 700r4 should be freshened up with at least external seals if sitting for a while. also a filter wouldn't hurt either.
the 700r4 is a nice transmission stock IMO when it isn't being beaten on. For more power/beatings upgrades are usually required or poof."

Is that for trans work?

 

yea he is talking bout refreshing ur tranny. for a grand more we could get 400 easy but it takes time to blueprint everything. and doing a ls1 swap includes gauges, wire harness, and ripping the dash out which sucks and takes lots of time not to mess the harness up. chip work will run u 250 through my guy and i dont trust anybody but him. he has been TPI chip work since the late 80's.
but we can do a lot of work to the engine. the 1 more grand we can bump up compression and add roller lifters and thats about it. to do roller lifters i recomend running chromemoly pushrods, arp rocker studs, and a few otherthings to add stregnth to the rocker assembly.
so what do you want ur gas milage to be?
that lets me know where to bump up the horsepower at.

 

that sounds great.. like I said I need to find out what im working with before we get too in depth with planning.. as far as gas milage.. 15-20 mpg city 20-25 highway. About how much power to the wheel would would 400 be?

 

Not trying to talk sh*t, but for 5k you could blow that out of the water with the motor you have, and does that 5k include mounts, an ecu and all of that?

whats up man, i'm out in lejune too, I drive around a rough looking 92 camaro with a white notch hatch, I'm also looking at building my first automatic, still debating whether to do a 700 or a 350, the only thing i've ever done to an auto is flush the fluid or drop it entirely and go manual, so if you do end up swapping an LS into your car, i'd be interested in the motor and trans you have now, however

for what your talking about, an LS doesn't make much sense to me unless you just want an LS, the transmissions are basically the same, except the LS trans is electronic and its a bit newer generation with a different bellhousing pattern, but they have the same gears and such as far as i know, and although the LS is a great motor, you have to get pretty crazy before a gen1 motor can't keep up, and even then its going to be cheaper

the motor you have now should be a roller cam block, so thats just a matter of jamming a new cam in it, headers for that car are way cheaper than ls swap headers are, for 5k you could build a decent 383 out of it, get better heads and intake, and still have plenty of cash for the trans and possibly a new rear axle, which your going to need soon if you build that motor right, which makes more sense to me than buying a crate motor or swapping an LS