Mike C

Figure on spending at LEAST $150 for a good set of small chamber heads with accessory holes. A better book IMO is Vizrads "How to build and modify SBC Cylinder heads" The 461, 462, 290, 291, 040 heads all are WITHOUT accessory bolt holes, which might be important. Stay away from any open chamber heads, even if they do have big 2.02/1.6 valves. The 186, 492, and 370 castings are all double humps. The 041 has a triangle but is the same basic large runner small chamber head. All of these have the holes. The 292 head was an over the counter called the turbo head. Pretty good head, but not as good as the newer aftermarket heads. Best bang for the buck, assuming your old heads will need vatting, valves, guides, surfacing, etc. is to just buy some L31 Vortec heads brand new. Have them modded for better springs/more lift and read Vizards advice on porting these castings. Stock they outflow any of the 60's hi-perf castings, even with big valves.

If you go with the 95 you get the updated Optispark, possibly saving you another expense down the road. If you have to buy a radiator, I would buy the Griffin. If you get a Camaro radiator virtually cost free, might as well try it. Obvioulsy the 95 donor car fan is where I would start. The grill opening in the Z is bigger than the F bodies, so fan SHOULD be sufficient if you can get it adapted to the most likely narrower radiator. Here is a page on T56 gear ratios. There appears to be at least 3 different common ones, so that may be something you investigate further. http://www.xse.com/leres/ss/calculator.html

You said you were going to buy a cam also, right? Norhtern Auto Parts has their 350 chevy high perf kit with hyper pistons, all gaskets, rings, bearings, oil pump, timing set AND your choice of Crane Energizer for $299. Buy David Vizard's book "Building SBC on a budget" from http://www.motorbooks.com. Way more information in two evenings readings than you can get from a 100 questions on a message board...

A 7 inch wheel with zero offset has FOUR inches of backspacing. Offset is measured from the center of the rim to the edge of the tire seating surface, while backspacing is measured from the outside of the rim ~ half inch difference. Zero offset means the wheel mount surface is in the true middle of the wheel, and in the case of the 7" rim, 4 from the inside edge. An 8" wheel with 4.5" bs is a zero offset, 5" for a 9" wheel.

Nissan Maxima circa 81-83 had an L24 in it. This cylinder head, P79 I think, has the good combustion chamber shape, but small chamber for good compression. Start junkyard shopping.

I would highly advise pocket porting the heads, buy Vizrds book on SBC heads, and going to the bigger 2.02/1.6 valves. The 1.94 stock bowl GM heads will pretty much limit you to 325 hp or so. If you car comfortable at that level, the 272 Energizer will complement those heads well.

IME and in accordance with everything I have read, says virtually no gain on the exhaust, but moderate to impressive gains on the intake. If you do run them, stay with the 1.5 exhaust setup. If they are 11755 Cranes, I'll give you a $150 or swap 8 11752 for 8 11755.

Compression may be fine depending on stroke and piston to deck height.

I haven't installed mine yet, but I took them to a buddy's brake lathe with a stock rotor and made the new ones same OD. When you get ready to have someone cut them, they'll probably look at you funny. What we found worked best was using the drum brake lathe on the discs edge.

For street/mild performance use, can't go wrong with the Crane Energizer line. Just stay away from the 284 grind. It's a POS IMO. They can be had for $109 or so with lifters and will last 100k+ miles if (once again) you keep spring pressures reasonable.

They will not have hardened seats. I have run non-hardened seats on unleaded gas for over 50k miles on my 331. You should have no troubles as long as you don't go over the top with spring pressure. If you run a small flat tappet cam with 110 lbs on the seat or so, they should last a long time.

Sounds like a bad booster combined with air in the master? If you are have the car in Austin ever, we can do a brakeline pressure test on it if you want to verify. Your car is slow: fluid from the master can ONLY get in the booster if the master is bad. If you see it INSIDE the car, not only is your master bad, your booster is, too. Leaky mastercylinders will wipe out the booster in record time. You will never get the brakes to feel right with a leaky master.

The themostatically controlled flex fan uses a spring assembly. When air temperature reaches a certain point, the expansion of the spring causes the clutch to engage. They work really well and were standard on most AC equipped V8 vehicles until the mid 80's.

Howdy! You have come to the right spot! I'll offer up some lo-buck tips: For your 240, get a late 81-83 ZX flat top 2.8 and score an N42 head from a dished piston 2.8 circa 75-76. Combine these two with a set of round top SUs that are appropriately jetted. An aftermarket cam and this will be a sweet setup. The 3.1l build up will flatten your wallet like nobody's business... For your V8 car, buy the Jaguars that Run book and a 95-97 LT-1 6 speed powered light wreck Camaro or Firebird and use as many parts as possible. WARNING: What follows is a sales pitch... I have a '73 parts car FS. It has F&R Suspension Techniques sway bars, NISMO springs, stainless brake lines, 4 speed trans, R200, 2 1/2" aluminized exhaust with Flowmaster aluminized muffler, NISMO 6 into two into one header, urethane steering rack bushings, steering shaft coupler, ball and socket thrust rod bushings, urethane sway bar bushings. I'm asking $800 for everything. Car is in reasonable shape but has a stupid sunroof. Email me if interested, I'm in Austin. I also have a set of round tops from a '72 for $100. $150 and I'll throw in an aircleaner as well.

Pete, I have a set of block huggers I bought. Unknown manf. I'll shoot a pic and you can tell me if they are the Hookers, and if so I can measure the port for you. I mocked them up on my LT1 and they do not obstruct the exhaust port of my CNC Heads ported heads using a FelPro small race header gasket.

Car Craft did a test a few years ago. Amazing how much power a fan like yours sucks. But what also was amazing, was how LITTLE power a thermostatically controlled clutch fan used. You can get a jukyard fan assembly or put together one with new parts for about $50. I personally like the simplicity of the clutch fan over the electric setup.

I would buy the Nissan studs. I had heard from someone that 300ZX studs would work and they were better? No guarantee. ARP makes stainless metric studs and I bought a set before I knew how much they cost... Ouch. $117 for 16 studs, and that leaves you one short!

Here's one from a Mustang site, you can swap trans: http://www.corral.net/tech/gearcalc.html Here is one from a Camaro site, lots of 6 speed stuff. http://www.xse.com/leres/ss/calculator.html Here's one that gives you RPM in gears as well: http://www.johnmaherracing.co.uk/gearcalc.htm Here's one that lets you enter P metric info: http://www.f-body.org/gears/

You are in a different income bracket than me! $2000 for a block is more than some of these guys whole projects! Lots of myths of 377 vs. 383. Been good discussions on stroke/bore and revability. Do a search, Grumpy posted really good info on this. The point of both the 383 and the 377 were to remedy shortcomings of GMs parts and designs. 377 got rid of the externally balanced crank and 383 got rid of the siamesed block. Neither which are all that bad it turns out. If you are spending that kind of money, and not limited in displacement to some class, it's insane to build either of those, go 406. Or bigger, but 415 ci seems to about the displacement/power return level IME. Then get a set of fully ported Dart pro 1's. 318cfm on the intake, $2395 complete. Got to http://www.enginemaster.com and check out the winning 365ci 604 hp pump gas motor using a 282/282 232@ .050 hydraulic roller.

You cannot use a standard double roller if you are going to keep the camshaft driven waterpump. If you use the newer optispark, you have to have the newer cam with longer dowel as well.

EDIT my above post... All of the common GM pumps have a 5/8 pilot, the Corvetter pump has a 3/4" pilot.

You seem to be a prime candidate for a two piece timing cover! Your exhaust restriction is the primary reason I would be reducing the profile of the cam. If you can optimize power below 6000 rpm, exhaust restrictions will have a more minimal effect on power. I hate to beat a dead horse... But if you spend more $ up front on the roller, you can reduce overall duration while increasing area under the curve. The broader powerband characteristics of the roller will allow you to reduce advertised duration while maintaining the same power band. Then (most likely) you won't have to swap cams all of the time! If you didn't already have a warehouse of cams, this would be cheaper, too! My mechanical roller is NOISY and my next cam will be a hydraulic roller, but with that said, CAT has mechanical roller lifters for $105 a set! Not much more than a set of Crane or Comp flat tappets. They get $240 for hydraulics, not such a smokin' deal. http://www.catpep.com/Products/ProductDetail.asp?Part_Category_ID=17 And I think it is Herbert who will custom grind mechanical rollers for $199. If you run a street roller type grind, you can use mechanical flat tappet springs for the most part. My street roller specified 145# seat springs. That being the case, you can have a mechanical roller for just a little over $300 rather than the $900 mentioned earlier. Something in the neighborhood of 280 degrees advertised duration, 235 at .050 and .560 gross lift would be awesome on a 108 deg LSA. Do you already have rockers? I've got a set of brand new 11752 Cranes that I would like to combine with a set of 11755 to have a 1.6/1.5 set if you want to buy a set of 11755 and swap half Harland SHarp is probably the best bang for the $, but cheaper rockers than the 11752 hit the retainers on my heads. They say they will clear 1.63 springs, but I think they would have trouble with 1.55 on my motor. My current springs are 1.437.

Don't let it get you down. I saw the tuning you were doing in the Chevy board. You may want to think about diggin into the motor again, however. Get the Proform degree wheel and make SURE you cam is where you want it. Then go to town on the distributor and the carb. 36 degrees total by 2800 should be fine for your new design heads.

Check out the Patriot headers on Jegs website. They show a D-port block hugger for angle plug heads, coated! for only $225. They use cone connection instead of gaskets at the collector as a bonus!

Short pumps can be confusing as well. There is the early short pump until '68. '69 in Corvettes and '72 in trucks. There is the mid-design short pump on 'vettes from 70-72 or so with a 5/8" pilot. Then they went back and forth between those pumps until '81. The '82 got it's own pump. Then the short pump on the '84-'91 Corvette got yet another pump. Reverse rotation, but pulley flange height is different than the earlier pumps. IME, the best thing to do is buy a complete accessory drive, preferably the one on your donor car! It can get expensive quick piecemealing one together. If you are just doing alternator, that's easy. Trying to get your Nissan AC compressor will make things more difficult as you will have to fab up a compressor mount to work with whatever accessory drive you wind up with. And there are bunches for long pumps. 69 to ~72 had one set of brackets. 72-76 another, then 77 to around '84. Then they went ribbed belt but not serpentine, then in 88 they went serpentine. This is on cars. Trucks stayed v-belt until 87 then serpentine in '88. As you can see, there is a ton of different combinations, so just make sure you get parts that all match!