389Z

I concur with Edelbrock's great service and reputation. They sent me a brand new cam and lifter set when we lost a lobe shortly after break-in. They didn't even inspect it, I just had to spend about 30 minutes on the phone with their two tech guys Dave and Dave and they shot me a new one out before it had even arrived at their shop. Now, despite feeling certain that we did everything by the book, installer error is most likely the only cause for cam failure and Crane even insists this is true and publishes an article about it. The guys at Edelbrock were great and even tried to make me a great deal on converting to a roller cam with new lifters for $400, but I had to pass due to lack of cash.

Well the 383 conversion of my 350 is done and all the small details complete and all guages and lights working. I have a link to my cardomain site with the final pictures. I have not had it on the dyno yet, but the extra power and torque the 383 has over the 350 are major and I have shut down all comers thus far. The car is running and looking great so stick to it all you stroker nuts out there. Once again, I don't think I would have ever got it all together without the great advice and collective knowledge available on hybridz. http://www.cardomain.com/ride/2675962/1

'73 240Z with a 383 SBC

I have a tag inset into my glove box that says Nordskrog 350Z. I have done a little research and they appear to have been another shop similar to Scarab who did conversions. Any know any other history on this? BTW - My newly built 383 is running great and I can tell you after seven months, it feels great to drive it. Bill

Update after the catastrophic failure: Well I have to say Edelbrock was totally cool on the warranty of my flat tappet performer rpm cam set. They sent me a brand new cam and lifter set and I spent about an hour on the phone with their tech guys Dave and Dave making sure this would not happen again. I'm sure that we did something wrong as grumpy has suggested, but none of would admit it at the time. It turns out after talking with the Edelbrock crew that we cheated a little on setting the lash and did not follow the Edelbrock instructions completely (opting to go with our previous experience in setting lash, etc). Also, we pre-soaked the lifters in oil which Edelbrock says is a big no no (they even have a special note in the kit speaking to it). I still don't understand why, but again 30 minutes of preparation would have saved two months of aggrevation. Good news. Break-in #2 came off without a hitch and all is right with the world. When all else fails read the instructions! I will have it all ready for the Texas roundup here in a few weeks. Man, what an adventure. I have torn this engine down three times now and I guess the third time is a charm. It runs and sounds fantastic and looking forward to seeing all you guys at the meet. Bill

Thanks much to everyone, especially Grumpy for all the great information and tips. I have printed out for the next break-in. I did purchase a balanced Eagle rotating assembly and a large shop (Wells Racing) in Dallas did all the clearancing and short block work so I may never know the answers to some of Grumpy's great short block questions, but they do most of the work for the pro circle and straight track guys around here so I assume all is well there. I never got a printout of exactly what was done or where all the tolerences ended up, but I will check back with them to see if there is some kind of documentation. The entire engine short of the block was brand new and we used Edelbrocks Performer RPM matched cam and lifter kit, with Comp Cam 3/8" pushrods at +.100 (Edelbrock recommendation) and brand new Edelbrock Performer RPM aluminum heads, matched Felpro gaskets, the spark plugs recommended by Edlebrock, and Calpro Tall valve covers with baffles and the matching breathers which were venting, but I never tried to blow through them so I will check that. We set the lash exactly as described (twirling between fingers until they stopped and then one full turn) and then checked them through two full rotations. The only thing we did that might have affected the valve train is we adjusted a few of the pushrod guide plates, as the clearances looked really tight, but we retorqued those and none of them were loose afterwards. I noticed that this adjustment put some of the rollers off dead center, but not anywhere close to having the roller hanging off, just a little off center. I pointed this out to my buddy Javier who has the most engine build experience, and he told me that was not an issue. In my mind that might have put some stress on the lifter to pushrod connection, but the pushrod in question is perfectly straight and unworn. I thought it a little odd that we would be having to make these adjustments on brand new Edelbrock heads right out of the box. I don't think the pushrods would have actually hit the sides of the heads, but it was really close, and we didn't want the aluminum to expand when heated and start rubbing the pushrod, so we adjusted the guides. I'll let everyone know how we come out on round 2, but it will probably be 3-4 weeks before we get the new kit back from Edelbrock. Thanks again, Bill

OK - Some weird things have happened since the initial break-in and want to document here so when I get all the rework done I don't have to repeat again. I don't think we did anything wrong, but the outcome makes me question otherwise. Please weigh in with comments. This is kind of long (as my threads often are), but a fair amount of bugs all at once...thanks in advance for any help/advice. 10.5:1 flat-tops and our colletive build team does not have any experience here so this may be problem #1. We used two breathers because the chrome top of the engine looked too nice to add a PCV valve and I didn't want to start sucking in oily emmissions into my pristine engine...Could this have cause pressure build up that led to the following two events? BTW, the oil psi never exceeded 65. 1. Oil leak through the rear RTV bead of the intake manifold. We prepped the front and back seals with 409 to remove oil etc. from the surface an place an ample bead of RTV on the front and back that squished out nicely about 1/8 of an inch out, but still had seepage leaks despite retourquing the intake bolts twice before the break-in. 2. The crank seal behind the dampener somehow worked partially out and was spewing oil out behind the dampener. It was a new seal that came with the timing chain cover kit ans was tapped in flush, but the polished billet timing chain cover we used/installed had the seal channel bored straight through the cover, instead of the recessed nested groove of the stamped steel cover we had before. This allows the oil pressure to press directly against the seal, which I am assuming the designers of the product took into consideration and would not be a problem, but I am just noting the difference. The new seal we installed seemed to be very tight so who knows, maybe we just got a bunk seal. The last totally crappy thing that has since developed was the following: We set the lash before break-in and all went well. We reset the lash after break-in and #8 exhause rocker required a little more relash than all the rest (not a ton, but a thread or two more), which seemed okay since we are using hydraulic lifters. Then after driving for maybe 10 more miles, we started hearing lifter clatter again so we pulled the valve covers and inspected the lash on #8 which seemed to be needed more lash. The geometry at this point seemed totally out of whack compared to all the rest of the lobes so we figured we either had a bad lifter or something worse. We pulled the lifter, which took considerable effort, but finally came free without having to pry it out and we found that almost a full 1/8 of an inch had been ground off the end and the wear was concave like an upside down spoon as if it had been ground off by a diamond grinder. We have not pulled the cam yet, but I can only imagine that the same damage will be evident there as well. We spoke to Edelbrock (performer RPM cam and lifters came as a kit) and took them through our build and break-in procedure and they are willing to warranty the whole thing and are thinking it is a bad lifter at this point as this is the only lobe that appears to be affected. Talk about crappy luck! Edelbrock is being very cool and will replace all the seals and send us a new cam and lifters. Can anyone think of another reason why/how this could have happened short of a bad lifter? Bill

I would definitely say it was burning rich during the break-in with no real tuning other than idle and of course the 2,500 - 3,000 rpms for 25 minutes is a much heavier load than normal conditions air-flow wise (too busy looking for fuel, coolant, and oil leaks to mess with the carb settings). I expected the glowing headers during break-in, but the melting motor mount was a little freaky. It is really not misshapen or out of altered as a result, just singed. The driver side was unaffected so that would tend to rule out the coating, but who knows. It doesn't seem to be happening now under driving conditions and I have no experience with urethane motor mounts, so I wanted to throw it out there just in case you guys had seen it before and could tell me to relax. Seems like all is well. I will follow-up if anything else develops. Just when you think youv'e see it all......

Anybody ever have this happen? I did the break-in for 25 minutes and never got above 180 degrees with good oil pressure, etc., but man the headers were aglowin'. A few small oil leaks caused some smoke, but all went well. When we rolled it out again, we noticed some red melted plastic on the ground and were stumped until we looked underneath. The passenger side polyurethane motor mount (got the red ones to match the chrome/red engine build) melted slightly enough to leave a couple of drops on the garage floor and a three inch string hanging down. It doesn't appear to have affected the mount as it is still solid and doesn't move a bit, but it seemed very strange. My buddy who has about seven SBC builds under his belt had never seen/heard of it and thought I would pass it along to you guys. My guess is the header heat caused it coupled with the 10:1 383. I am continuing to watch it and no further damage so I am figuring it is just another break-in thing. Anybody ever seen anything like this on polyurethane mounts? Also did the maiden drive and the 383 is like a new car compared to the old 350. Nothing too radical as we still needed to rework the lash and finish the carb tuning, but everybody I drove by just stood there slack-jawed as I motored past. Nothing sleeper about it... Bill

I converted my existing 350 240Z to 383 and wish you luck with your swap. Take your time dude and do it right. I would suggest really documenting the crap out of the wiring as it will all be jacked up when you convert (depending on your build). Are you going with EFI or carb? If carb, you will be able to lose about 20 lbs. of wire and firewall parts you will no longer need. Seek and ye shall find on this site and that is no joke. I have never been let down by this crowd.

I found a crazy old guy to weld all my vent lines except the one big one closed and I ran it back to the fill cap tee and chunked the cannister. Works great so far. Better than all those crazy snake lines coming up from the tank to the cannister. Many guys find they have to replace these anyway due to cracking and gas fumes. Same guy installed a 3/8" fuel sump line to replace the 5/16" line which is really overkill for my application, but I like having the larger steel fuel lines running all the way from the tank without the restriction in case I want to sip more and faster later.

Thanks Davy. The '69 has a BB, but you are right, my bet is the Z will smoke it either from a rolling start or on the track as my buddy Javier (the owner) has never run better than low 13's and races it quite a bit. The real bet will come against another buddy with a Rousch stage III Cobra. He has been talking smack for for six months and he knows how to drive that supercharged pony, but I'm lighter by 1,000 lbs. with bigger cubes and more torque, so I'm curious how it will turn out. HarrisonTX - Pics are here earlier in this thread. See the cardomain link. Much earlier in the project and the engine was not in the car yet. Got a bunch of new ones I need to load. The car is in Irving send me a PM and I'll give you a shout when I'm in town. After six months in the garage, I would drive the car to Australia if I could so a trip to FW is a short hop or feel free to swing by and check it out and have a cool one. Bill

Well, after working weekends since September, I finally fired up the stroker and broke in the cam. First time I have done this and I have to tell you that was the longest 25 minutes in my life (neighbors too no doubt). I don't think I was that nervous when my daughters were born. No fuel or coolant leaks (and yes we had fire extinguishers with pins pulled handy), but smoking header paint and a small valve cover gasket oil leak dripping a little oil on the headers created a far sight more smoke than I was expecting and was plenty exciting. The good news was the sound difference between the tired old 350 compared to the brand new 383. Oil pressure was good and got past the break in without catastophic failure. Back to Dallas again from San Antonio to tune and test and 1st drive is on target for Saturday to unleash the beast. Thanks again to you all for the endless amount of information and guidance that comes for this killer site. I have a video of the break-in, but it is pretty lame. I will upload videos of the first drive without the smoke effects. Bill

I looked into many of the collector car (Haggerty, American Collecotrs, etc.), but they all had too many restrictions so I went to my full service State Farm agent. I have full coverage (liability and collision $150k/$300k, the works) stated value of $11,000 (but I had to document with pictures and receipts) and no mileage limitations on my mean 383 stroker V-8 '73 and I pay $32/mo. I have three cars covered with them and my house and have been a customer for over 15 years so that helps a lot. Not a daily driver, but I drive it a bunch and did not want to have to watch the odometer. Bill

Welcome to the V-8 section. I have a TH350 with 350 SBC. I drove just like you are planning for two years before rebuilding to 383 stroker conversion which will be done the weekend. I also have a low stall torque converter which suits me fine for streeting, but I have had and driven higher stall speed converters on other vehicles and found them to be a pain for daily driver applications. The TH350 tranny will also kill you mpg-wise on the highway as you probably already know and I often wished for an overdrive when I had to drive far, but it sounds like you are not worried about that. I'll let others weigh in on the virtues of your other choices, but I am happy with my setup for what it is worth. I added a shift kit and liked the added performance. Lastly, if you are swapping motors and tranny's it may be worthwhile to add an R-200 differential to your project. Mine has the stronger R-200 and many here can attest that this will be your weakest link with the added hp and torque. Best of luck on your project, Bill