Likely cost of a engine upgrade/rebuild

[chevy-stu]

qube_TA said:

300bhp/ton said:

qube_TA said:

Purely as an exercise, a stroked 305, properly set up & balanced with some decent flowing heads, proper exhaust manifold, a lively cam and something to feed it properly then 350+ horses would be there, however do the same to the 350 and it would have over 400.

Guess it depends what you want. If the car's a keeper an Ls1 will easily make loads more hp and be better on fuel. Plus being lighter should improve handling too. But I agree there is a cost involved. If you're handy with the spanners you can (could??) pick up LS1's complete with ECU for £1500. I suspect a crate 350 making that kind of power would cost more.

Either route has to be good though , just keep the car on the road and performaning I say

Coolio

Not really true though, although I'm not pretending a modern LSx engine isn't far better than a Gen 1 block, but from a horsepower/displacement POV there's little between them. In addition if you go down to the drag strip you're far less likely to find an LSx engine as they're so much more involved to tune and make real power out of as you have all the nonsense with remapping n ECU's.

£1500 is having a laugh, sure you could possibly source an LS1 engine for that money but it wouldn't fit the car without modification to the engine bay, and then it wouldn't match up to your transmission so you'd have to swap that out, you'd also need to swap out the fuel tank and rear axle before it would do anything, the lighter engine would require new springs n shocks up front to keep the car the right height. Also you'd need to convert the engine to a cable driven throttle as the electric one won't work and you'd need to fiddle with the electrics before it would talk to your dials on the dash. This is monumentally more expensive than an engine rebuild on the existing motor, beefing up the transmission and swapping out the fuel pump.

Furthermore if you wander over to the peeps at http://thirdgen.org then quite a few who have done the LSx swap have said that because it's lighter the handling of the car has been worse, yes the 1/4 mile has been better due to reduced weight but it's apparent that GM designed the car with the weight of original engine in mind and changing it throws out the balance of the car.

I weighed up the options for doing a LS engine swap before buying a crate engine. As qube-TA says, I never found one for anything like that money, so went the stroker 383 crate engine route with ally heads etc.. The advances in decent aftermarket cylinder heads, and more available cam, carb, inlet options mean getting good reliable power from the old iron small block is cheaper than ever.

The LS engines are brilliant but If you and add up all the associated conversion costs, and I'm guessing as the OP is asking about other people building him an engine I'm presuming he'd have to pay for someone to fit the engine/convert fuel tank/install fuel pump/fuel lines/ sort loom/get auto box to work/sort engine mounts plus loads more I can't think of that'll come up it really is a serious investment. Only way it's worth it is if you really want a 6 speed manual and get an amazing deal as a complete package from a crashed car, even then you have to be keen.

[300bhp/ton]

lol, no worries.

I'm not saying it was the only option, see my 2nd post down. I was trying to say about tuning the lump that's already there. While the old TBI/TPI's aren't the latest stuff, you can still make the car a lot quicker. So I agree with all you say

[irocfan]

I'd look at getting a stroker kit (I had a 383 in a previous camaro and it was a total beast!!! Boatloads of torque and hp wasn't lacking either!!) with a decent set of heads and a re-worked tpi system... an upgraded 700R4 (or was the newer version of that the 4L60E?) will handle that and then to round things off a strong rear-end with gearing of your choice

Now the above will not be *cheap* but it will be a VERY potent street and strip vehicle

[IROC-Z]

Wow I didn't realise the thread would generate this much interest! Thank you to everyone who has provided ideas and explained things to me. To summarise I am a lot more aware of what is possible and the various pitfalls. I don't want some fire breathing drag machine, just a car with a bit more punch and I think a rebuild plus some modifications to the air intake system would improve the responsiveness. Anything more serious then a rebuild of my 305 has cost implications in terms of suspension, transmission and rear axles that I don't really want to get involved in.

ss64ii: thanks for the offer but as with my original post I am not really in a position to get the work done at present, I am just after some ideas. I will keep you in mind as a rebuild of my current 305 seems the best option.