dr_hunt

unflamed. The v8 chevy will blow the doors off of the stroked 3.1. A mild 350 will have over 300 tq from 3K to 6K easy. My 406 dyno'd at 690HP and 552 tq with over 400 tq from 2800 to 7000rpm. My boys 350 dyno'd at 630hp and 520tq and made over 400 tq from 3200 to 7500. If this 260z don't fly we'll wish it did and flame it.

Ok, the days of heavy duty are behind us now in the automobile industry. It's all bout high production, low cost. Most of the cast iron in use today is comprised of recycled iron. To get a high nickel block you have to look at World or Dart. I have one Dart block and 10 early 350 and 400 4 bolt blocks. Cylinder bore wear is a factor of many things, including intake air quality(ie. air cleaner), piston skirt thrust which is a function of rod angle, cyhlinder pressure and rpm. And last but not least oil change interval (most important). Picture this, you start with a world or dart block at 4.00 inch bore, run it for 100K, bore it .030, assuming you changed oil regularly, run it another 100K, bore it .060, run it another 100K, bore it .125, run it another 100K, bore it .155, run it another 100K, bore it .185 run it another 100K. That's 600K miles and you have CNC machined to tight tolerance, priority oiling, clearanced for big crank, 4 bolt mains on all 5 caps, blind tapped head bolt holes, designed for 1500 HP and the list goes on for $1900.

The bitterness of poor quality lingers long after the sweetness of a low price! CAT parts are junk!

What compression? What budget? Street only? What trans? Ditch the HEI and go MSD, you won't be sorry. Carb might be too small, depends on rpm. Full length headers will offer more HP and Torque call S&S headers. Windage tray only shows HP gain when turning over 6K Hyd roller offers more power and tq which is the long arm of the law!

The block huggers may hold you back from the 500/500 mark although the engine is capable. Ever think about the full length 1-3/4 from S&S headers? Keep us posted with pic's and vid's if you have em.

The 383 stroker motor is usually built with 5.565 400 rods and a ground down 400 crank. The 400 and 350 share the same compression height in pistons. More popular are 5.7 rods and 6.0 rods, which is usually done as an upgrade in rods, but also leaning towards all the hype about piston dwell at tdc and rod to stroke ratio and more top end power. The short rods work well for high compression street motors due to the lack of piston dwell at tdc which helps prevent detonation. 383's only work well if they have good heads on them, actually any engine works better with good flowing heads, but as you go up in cubic inches, you need more flow to extract the true potential of your new and larger combination. 350's will make just about as much power and torque given the same head, as a 383. You can't feel the difference in the drivers seat due to a 20 lb-ft of torque increase in a sbc, maybe you could in a Yugo or geo metro, but not a v8 chevy, ford or mopar. 383's will produce more low end and mid range torque, which makes them more fun to drive, because torque is what you "feel". Something to Ponder: Why build a 383 when you can build a 400 for the same money? Besides if you use good heads the 400 will outperform the 383 hands down due to larger bore size and more cubes, so if bigger is better, get bigger or biggest. Don't rev as quick? really, I doubt if anybody has really measured how quickly an engine will rev compared to another engine of a different configuration but same HP, it is so minute of a detail it isn't worth mentioning. Even more importantly can you really tell the difference? Higher horsepower engines will rev more quickly than a stocker, that is a fact. Actually, it is more dependent on the weight of the vehicle given the same HP engine, not stroke of the engine. 383's are great, more torque is better period. Nothing wrong with the 383, but it would be great if it was built right to extract all the potential of the larger stroke and subsequent cubic inches! I rode in a 350 V8 scarab conversion back in the 70's, I might of been in diapers or maybe I should have been in diapers cause it scared the #C@& out of me. It was without a doubt the fastest thing I ever rode in when I was a teenager and there wasn't much very fast then. It had a 350, flat top cast pistons, 350hp/350 chevy hydraulic cam, stock 882 heads, edelbrock performer, qjet, HEI, Headers, th350 with a B&M 2500 stall converter. Actually I rode in another v8 scarab conversion with a 327 and a 4 speed, it was truly awesome, rubber in all 4 gears. I think any z with a v8 is truly a blast to drive or ride in. How about going hog wild with a 700HP sbc, and be truly scared &^%$less. It doesn't take much engine to make a z fast due to the light weight of the car. A mild 300 to 350HP sbc in a z is very streetable and will almost jump out of it's own paint leaving the stoplight with minimal if any tirespin if it's an automatic car with a low stall converter. Of course I should qualify streetable, daily driver is what I call streetable, my cars are streetable, but it's hard on bronze distributor gears and valve springs, not to mention you couldn't afford the alcohol fuel to drive it anywhere other than Sonic on Saturday night. Buy it and enjoy!

When considering carb size keep in mind that advertised flow (ie. 750) will not actually wet flow that much and that this figure is at Standard temp and pressure, ie. perfect conditions. I have seen on a flow bench 750's that will flow 650 to 700 depending on the make of carb, carb type, choke horn or no choke horn, type of booster, and varies by carb venturi casting to casting. If a 600 is too small, and it is. You won't see much improvement going to a 650. A 700 or 750 should fill the bill. Holley's are by far the most widely, used performance carb. Others like Edelbrock, carter are mostly emissions carbs and will not offer the same out of the box performance that a holley DP carb will. Holley also makes more street carbs as well but unless your trying to get mpg's and are a carb wizard, I'd go with the holley for simplicity reasons. Aftermarket builders such as DaVinci, C&S, Braswell and others offer some fine carbs that you can't beat with any other carb. I have run them all and now run two C&S aerosol Billets, one is an 800 going on my new 350 comp roller motor for my boys 260z and the other is a 900 which runs on my Monte SS with a 406, which weighs in at 3800 certified scaled pounds, runs 11.70's @115 at 6000 feet elevation. I have a box stock new 750DP and on race gas the same car ran 12.79 and with the C&S on alky it went 11.73 the same day. Alky doesn't add that much power but it shows that the carb both in size and quality picked up probably another .5 seconds. The throttle response is unbelievable with the C&S, try one, they have a 30 day money back guarantee which is not offered anywhere in this fine land. Check them out at http://www.candsspecialties.com. And be carefull buying used carbs, unless you know what your looking for, like tight throttle shafts, no warped or cracked baseplates or housings, body, etc.