Last night after dinner I was out with my buddy and we went down to a nearby auto shop and met up with a mutual friend of ours. He was working on swapping his fuel pump for his new LS1.

I was talking to him about my slow-@$$ L03 and about how I am looking for a 350 and he started telling me about one that he had for sale.

It's a 350, with 12# injectors, a comp cam (he said that it was the biggest possible cam he could put in that motor) and it's been completely rebuilt. It doesn't have heads on it, but he does have a Tuned Port intake that he would sell with it. It's been at the track a few times and ran consistant 13's. I'm pretty sure that he's telling me the truth because my buddy has seen him run in that motor before. It's got a little over 3,000 miles on it and he claims that it was well taken care of.

He offered to sell me the motor by itself (which he says he has $2000+ of work into) for $600. He also said that he would throw the TPI setup in with it for $1000 total.

Not to mention that I know that he would help me put it in.

I need opinions on this one guys... I have done very little research on TPI, I know that the wire harness has to be changed as well as the fuel pump... but I am still a newbie with TPI. Do you think that this is a good deal?

 

Coming from someone who has gone through a similar dillemma all I can say is make sure you take into account ALL of the expenses before you take the first step. There are a couple of considerations here, first what kind of parts was the engine built with (the last thing you want is to go through all the expense and time fo the swap just to have to pull the motor after a few thousand miles). What cam is in it exactly? The "biggest cam that will work" can mean very different things - biggest to pass smog? biggest to give a smooth idle? Also cam selection has a great deal to do with the cylinder head selection. You stated this motor was being sold as a long block, what heads will YOU be using. What is your budget like? If you plan on having someone else do the swap expect to pay...even if he is a friend, the swap is not too dificult technically speaking but it is fairly labor intensive. Electronics, what are you going to do here? If you have the cash you could take the easy route and buy the street and performance integrator harness then you could do the electronics swap yourself (it's all plug and play) you could get a harness from the junkyard (though these can be tough since most yards sell TPI motors complete) you could get a painless kit but I would take that as a last resort since they are very very universal. Also make sure you budget for all of the misc sensors, since the motor is out I usually like to change them. Don't forget the fuel pump, if you don't want to drop the tank you can run an external booster pump but they can be noisey. One of the most important things, do you feel comfortable with all of this? I try not to soley rely on other people, and even if there is something that I have someone else do, I still like to know whats going on enough so that I'm not totally in the dark. I could write all day on this subject (literally). I have gone through so many experiences with my own RS (which now has a 383ci stroker with the Accel Super-Ram) I'm not saying it wasn't worth it, but there are always things that are hard to forsee. If you have any questions feel free to post or PM me.
Good Luck
-Mike

 

12# injectors? Never heard of those before. What was the engine rebuilt with? Hyper stuff? Forged stuff? What all is he going to include with the tpi for the extra 400 bucks? If it's just the intake, runners, plenum and fuel rails you could get that for like 100 bucks. Find out what cam is in it for sure. Not just what kind but the exact specs. And find out what kind of heads he was running on it before he took them off. That motor might have ran 13's with some really good heads and will only go 14's-15's with normal or okay heads. Find out if anything has been done to the block and what compression it had with the heads he was using. Find out if the block is a factory roller block or a pre-87 block. Lots of things you'll want to know before you fork out 1k for an engine. How many times did this guy run the engine at the track and why did he take it out? He might have tore it all to hell and took it out because of that and now he's just trying to put it off on somebody else. You never know with people these days.