Budget 355 build in a 88 K 1500

[THEFERMANATOR]

I posted this at FSC.com, and figured I would put it here as well since some of you guys still play with gassers.

I built a 355 for a friend earlier this year and we did it on a pretty tight budget for the most part. He recently dyno'd it, and needless to say I was very impressed with what it made for no more than we put in it. The engine got just a basic rebuild on it, so nothing fancy.

Heres the build list:
SEALED POWER .030 over cast pistons polished with a brown scotch brite pad
SEALED POWER moly rings
stock GM 80's rods
reground crank with ACL bearings
COMP CAM MAGNUM timing chain 2100
COMP CAM hydraulic EFI cam XE249H
COMP CAM bolt lock plate
COMP CAM lifters
stock pushrods
stock valve spring hardware
COMP CAM springs 981-16
VORTEC oil seals for the valve stem's
ARP head bolts(I hate stretch bolts)
MELLINGS 10552 oil pump and matching pick-up(hardened oil pump drive included)
and FEL-PRO gaskets to seal it all up

The heads got a very basic port job which entailed cleaning up the swirl ports and removing the lip under the valve in the intake runner, cleaning the exhaust ports and beveling the guide slightly to reduce reversion, beveled the lip in the combustion chambers and just a basic smoothing of them in general

Intake just got a good cleaning and removed any pieces of slag in the castings in the runners

throttle body got the air horn cut off and slighlty thinned the throttle shaft

stock injectors got soaked in my carb cleaner and then pop tested the redneck way to verify spray pattern

A set of mid length 1 5/8" headers that he got given to him(pretty rusty and leak a bit, but work)

and an aold JET chip out of a wrecked truck

All and all I believe he spent about $1300 in parts(I won't disclose my labor charges), but it made for a good solid budget build. It's a 88 standard cab K1500 with 3.42 gears, put down 262HP and 352 foot pounds of torque at the rear wheels averaged over 3 runs. He did say it fell off flat at 5,000, but was really flat from 1,000-4,000 RPM's on the dyno. I'm just throwing this out there to show that you don't have to throw a bunch of money at one of these to make a respectable engine that can tow strong and still keep up with modern trucks.

 

[6.2 turbo]

Comp Cams are the best for gas motors. I did a cheap rebuild on a 350 with 305 heads and a Comp extreme energy cam with 470 lift. That motor suprised a lot of people. It even ran a 13.0 @101 mph in my 86 Monte Carlo SS .

 

[THEFERMANATOR]

He said this thing shocked the dyno operator as it just looked like a stock engine with an old rusty set of headers on it. Considering that these engine stock would only dyno around 170 at the wheels, I thought 262HP was pretty impressive. I've talked a few guys out of the VORTEC heads now and got em to stay with the swirl ports, needless to say they were pretty happy that they didn't spend the money on VORTECS when I was done. Vortecs are nice for a performance engine, but you can't beat these old swirl port heads for a truck where you want torque AND HP right off idle for pulling.

 

[6.2 turbo]

Do you think ,with everything else the same except , vortec heads ,you would loose low end power ?

 

[btfarm]

Looks like a good build to me. Only things I would have done different was about a 268 grind and roller rockers.

 

[THEFERMANATOR]

Vortec heads work well, but they don't make alot of power until about 3500+ in the power band. The last VORTEC engine I did was a real dog below 3500, but 4,000 on it would flat out break the tires loose. Swirl port TBI heads were designed specifically for bottem end grunt and low RPM milage, and they work really well for this in trucks with some minor porting. GM really screwed the pooch on em stock by putting a lip under the valve that basically cuts the swirl port ramp off from working. I wish I would have taken some pics of them before and after to have shown what I do to em, but I should be doing another set here in the next few months again. As for the cam and rockers. This was done on a budget with the full inetentions of keeping the stock TBI and the JET chip working happily. And roller rockers are a waste of money unless you plan on turning 5,000 RPM's or need high spring seat pressure. For a low RPM engine like the TBI's, I ran the spring pressure actually a bit below what the cam card reccomended as I knew it would never tunr more than 5K RPM's. I installed them at 1.800 instead of 1.750 like the cam card reccomended.