My friend patts giving me his 87 blazer for 350 dollars, the engine in the blazer is a 350 that was out of a 79 vette *i know, who cares, its still a sbc... its out of a vette though because the engine has been in his family the whole time. along with the car that has a big block in it now*

Anyways.. a friend of mine was saying that droping that engine into my camaro will be the death of it.

His argument is this:

Having the engine hooked up to a 4wd tranny and then having it hooked up back to a 700r4 is going to destroy the engine, he says its just like never servicing the transmission and then finally replacing the oil and the transmission fails.

So will droping this "truck" engine in my camaro be the death of the engine?

He says it wont be as long as I dont dog on it.

 

My old/other engine would have died a long time ago had that been the case of 4wd then to the RWD.

 

Yeah I was trying to tell him ive never heard of anything like that and he was saying its the fact that I dont want to think it, I was laughing. oh well

 

Before you install it, flip it over and peek at the #5 main bearing. That's about the only thing that takes a beating on a manual trans engine. Of course, I'd probably want to freshen up the engine anyway. A set of Clevite 77s is about $55.

BTW - I wouldn't go bragging too much about it being from a '79 Corvette. I think they were worth a whopping 185 HP or something like that. The cam was good for .381/.402 lifts and 196/204 duration. Static C/R was in the neighborhood of 8.2:1. Redline was about 5,050 RPM. "Crack-O-Matic" head castings with 76cc chambers didn't help much either.

On the up-side, doing so little work, the engine could last forever if treated well.

 

Unless it was a L82, those came with like 225 FWHP, a cam that specs 224/224 duration, still had the lame 8.2:1 compression, smog castings with 2.02/1.60 valves though.

Do up a set of 305 HO heads with 58 cc chambers, unshroud the valves to get the CC you desire to keep the compression ratio in check, port them heavily, use the L82 cam (if equiped), the intake and carb should be atleast decent, good exhaust, and it will be plenty potent.

 

Make sure the engine is good shape before you install it in your car, because if any little thing goes wrong, your friend's myth will be perpetuated, and one day his son will be on a message board telling everybody not to swap engines because they WILL blow up if they are not left in the original car or truck.

 

All i gotta say is you had better do something with that trans if you havent already, IMHO the 700R4 is a very weak tranny in stock form even a gutless smogger 305 can kill them.

 

The early year 700-R4s had some spline, pump, and clutch issues, but the later examples were fairly decent. It's so easy to beef one to take 400+HP that even high school dropouts are doing it for a living.

 

Like this?



Ended up with ported '416s, 1.94/1.50, stock carb and intake, and a slightly better (than L81) cam, and made noticably more power.

 

I dont plan on doing any performance mods to it as of yet. I will be putting the performer rpm intake that I had on my old engine. And down the road ill get a better cam and possibly buy a set of heads or just port these out, I havent had a car for close to a year now so I will just be extatic just to have this baby up and running again.

I wasnt bragging about the vette engine, I was just saying because that was my friends argument. Trust me, I know better than to say HEY I GOT THIS 350 VETTE BLOCK. they are all the same, I know. Just because it was out of a vette doesnt mean anything. I know

 

We knew that. The "plus" is that it might be a four-bolt bottom end. And it's obvious you can improve power and efficiency with some heads and a cam.