Monday, February 08, 2016

The New 350 in the Camaro

A little while ago I decided to have a serious look at the motor in my 1980 Camaro. I had tried to work a few of the bugs out of it with no luck. You see,I bought this car from a friend of mine from my old home town. I took him at his word that things were built properly. Big mistake on my part but,that story's for another time.

  After swapping the 750 Edelbrock Performer for a 650 of the same make and a little tuning the car sounded pretty good,just have a listen to the video.
 

 Thing is,when I took it out on the street,it was a dog. My 96 Chevy Pick Up could lay waste to it. And now matter what I did I always had a bit of an erratic idle quality. I only had 4-5 inches of vacuum  showing on the gauge so I got to thinking that there may have been a mistake when the cam timing was set up. There was a gear drive timing gear set up installed. Or maybe that the valve lash wasn't adjusted properly. I had guide plates and screw in studs so I knew I was going to have problem setting my valve lash with the intake manifold in place. So I decided to have a serious look at the internals. So a buddy and I started to pull a few things apart. That's when I knew there was problems with this engine.

Old 350 in the Camaro
Old 350 short block

Note the Harmonic balancer, looks a lot like it was hammered on, never a good thing to see! Generally when that's happened you end up with more crankshaft end play then you want. The screw in studs were nice to see however, the finger tight nuts gave me further cause for concern. When I got to this point, I was still hoping to be able to salvage the engine and not have to remove the short block. Then I noticed that the block had 6 matching piston bosses. The last two were from a different set of pistons. The cylinder heads were ported out to the point that the porting had cut into the hold down screw holes for the valve covers.
Casting number 3991492 SBC Heads
These heads were a 3991492 casting number. And yes, they were angle plug small chamber Camel back heads. The porting job completely ruined some of the best factory heads that ever came out the back door of the Racing Shop in Detroit.

  I had and engine from my daughter's S-15 that would serve until I could find a suitable replacement for the long run. I also had a set of aluminum Vortec cylinder heads that would do a fine job in the Camaro. So I set to pulling the old heads off the replacement 350. I was in for a suprise. Stamped right on the top of the flat top forged pistons the resting inside the cylinder of my daughter's engine was .020. Meaning that the engine had been bored out. The cross hatch in the cylinders was still excellent. I pulled the pan off the bottom of the motor to find forged rods. When I pulled the heads off I also noted that there was no carbon build up at all. And the motor did run very strong in my daughter's truck.

  So after a gasket kit,installing the Vortec heads,adjusting the valve lash prior to a new Edelbrock intake the motor was ready to go in. The heads are 2.02 Patriot Aluminum Vortec's with 188 CC runners. The did have both old school and the new Vortec intake bolt patterns however, I installed a proper Edelbrock Aluminum intake manifold because I had sealing issues with the old style bolt pattern with these cylinder heads.
New 350 Chevy
The new 350 looks really good inside that Camaro!

After bolting the carb, water pump and the rest of the accessories up the small block was ready to fire up.
Here's what it sounds like,
 

All in all a good result and I'm very happy with it.



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