I'm building a new 383, I have a 4 bolt main block, eagle crank, H-beam rods, and 11:1 pistons all forged. I'm taking my time doing it right. I'm shooting for 500hp all motor. I'm going to run a roller cam, I don't know to go solid or hydraulic. Any pros or cons? I'm thinking of painting the lifter valley, can you use engine enamel? Should I use 1.5 or 1.6 rockers?

I think I'm going to order Dart heads, 215cc
Is a belt drive timing setup more money and trouble then its worth? I'm thinking of using a lunati jegs part# 638-60132. I have a weiand single plane intake that was given to me are they decent.Does anyone have any ideas, tips, or secrets?

 

500 HP should be no problem at all, with the right parts.

You can get there with either a hyd or a solid roller. Solid would be easier, but requires a little more involvement on the part of the owner. That seems like a reasonable cam choice to me.

Yes those heads should be fine.

Weiand makes too many intakes to know whether whatever one you have is suitable. Given how cheeeep intakes are in general though, and that you're talking about $1400 of heads, $1000 of valve train, $1800 of bottom end, PLUS machine work, a $200 intake isn't worth quibbling over at the end of wgat will surely be a $6000 build just because it's "free", if it's not optimum. Get the EXACT RIGHT ONE for what you want, and sell or give away the "free" one if it's not PERFECT FOR YOU.

You can either have the lift you want ground into your cam; or you can fine-tune it with rocker ratio. Your call. with that cam, I believe I would go with 1.5s, either Crower or Comp STEEL ones. NOT aluminum, if you're going to drive it on the street. Use Isky Red Zone lifters, or their new ones that are specifically designed for street use (what's the name, Roll-Eze? something like that, I forget exactly); DO NOT use regular ones.

Whatever you do, MAKE SURE you have the heads set up to accomodate more lift than whatever you think you've got. A little margin of safety is ALOT wiser than skating right on the edge of disaster. If you think it's expensive to do it right, then it's DEFINITELY too expensive for you to do it a second time, AFTER it drops a valve from a broken spring, or tears up retainers, lifters, and cam lobes from valve float and the pounding that causes.

A $$belt drive$$$ is not an efficient use of money at such a low power level. Use a good REAL roller timing chain, not gears, not "truck chain", and it will be fine.

Yes you can paint the lifter valley; yes engine enamel is fine for that. Electric motor varnish is better because you can make it build up thicker, though.

 

The bottom end is at the machine shop. When it returns I need to decide on a cam. Why would you not use alumminum rockers. I have them on my 355, 450hp and never had a problem.

I don't know which intake it is exactly. It's probally 10 years old. I'm not trying to cheap out, just trying to use any parts I already have. I have a victor jr on my car and love it, I may go with that.

Now all I need is the car, anyone have a 73 or 74 project camaro.
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When you paint the lifter valley do you paint the entire thing or just the walls?

 

For the same reason that aircraft frames have to be torn COMPLETELY down and inspected, and certain parts replaced REGARDLESS of what they "look" like, every however many hours of operation or takeoffs & landings.

Aluminum fails by a mechanism known as "fatigue". A moving or otherwise cyclically stressed part will, after some number of cycles, undergo changes in its crystalline structure, that cause it to simply break in half at some unpredictable time. It's a statistical thing; that is, you can't predict that this part normally lasts 1,374,208 cycles, and then on the the 1,374,209th one it will break. Rather, it's more like, if you take a large number of them and split them up into batches and run them until one breaks, half of the batches will have had one break by the 1,374,208th cycle. Furthermore, the nature of fatigue is such that ¾ of the batches will have had one break within a relatively short additional number of cycles; and after yet another relatively small # of cycles, nearly all will have had one break. But, only some very tiny percentage of those parts will have experienced a break before, say, 750,000 cycles; so in the case of airplane parts, the FAA sets the inspection/replacement interval at a point just before the failure curve starts to come up of of zero. That's why they don't often fall out of the sky for broken parts.

Rockers are no different from any other aluminum part. The half-life runs somewhere in the 10,000 to 15,000 miles on the street for most rockers; less, sometimes ALOT less, if they're overstressed, by things like coil bind or over-revving (valve float, which pounds the mortal crap out of valve train parts). If you have anywhere near that # of miles on your aluminum rockers, you're living on borrowed time. Now if it's a strip-only car, then they're probably fine; they'll generally last thousands of passes, because each pass is less than a mile.

HP claims have nothing to do with it.

Don't worry about the intake. "Use what you already have" is just a less .... ummm, prejudicial .... choice of words, that means "cheeeeep out". But who knows, that all depends on exactly what intake it is; might be perfect for you. Or it might not. But regardless, now is not the time to be stressing over the cheeeepest part of the total build and worrying about whether you're going to use the one you already have or not.You can paint the entire inside of the crankcase, and aid oil drainback that way. Just not inside the lifter bores or the main saddles.

This is a 3rd gen board; 82-92.

 

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This is a 3rd gen board; 82-92.[/quote]

I'm well aware this is a 3rd gen board, I have an 89. Does that restrict me to only being able to like 3rd gens? I added that because with us all being car guys I figured someone may chime up with one.

I do appreciate your post. I wasn't arguing with you, just looking for info. thanks

 

Let me suggest then, that this motor be planned for your '89.

All else being equal, it will go faster than those heavy older cars, anyway.