79 Vet SB

Just finished a nice little 350 sb for a guy with a 79 vet. He is keeping it mostly stock so the choice was easy. Started with a late model vortec block set up with a roller cam and went for their. Made it a 9.2-1 compression and used the GM 383 cam. Did a copy of their 350 ram jet motor except it will be a carbed set up. Did one for a guy two years ago and its in a 79 Malibu with a stock converter th350 trans and a 3.50 9inch for rear gear. Nice bracket car, runs very low 13 at 103mph. and gets 17mpg with a 600cfm carb.

Mild mid sized v8's rule. Especially ones in very light vette's.

Your build up was not too dissimilar to one I had done with my previous valiant. Mild 8.2:1 compression, performer intake, holley 600 single feed carb, modern-retro automatic 340 cam(same duration, wider LSA, more lift), basic headers and MP ignition and it was a very strong performer. Even w/ 2.94 gears it cut low 14's, and with 3.90's it was very solid 13's. A couple more basic old school hop-ups (milling heads for higher compression, pocket-ported, performer rpm intake, bigger cam, 750 mechanical secondary carb) as well as swapping the low-po OD manual trans for a proper non-OD 833 manual had the thing running much much quicker...although trans linkage issues always prevented me from getting a solid run at the strip to actually get a real time, 1/8th mile times were over a second quicker (8.9-9.0 vs 7.8-7.9).

Always thought the late 70's/early 80's vettes were very underrated in terms of desireability. Loose all the emissions crap and build even a decent v8 and those things have the looks along with the improved performance to be hero's in my book.

Not to sure I would use such a low compression and it would be hard to do with the vortec heads with the 64cc chambers. I used a .022 steel coated shim head gasket. The factory is 9-1 with the stock head gasket so a little more compression helps. Used the stock 1.5-1 rockers and could have gone up to the 1.6 and picked up some on the lift and still kept the 109 lob sep. It the same cam that mercury marine uses in the V8 applications. Great torque from idle to 5,500rpms, just what a person needs with a stock converter and not a lot of gear.

Well, it's not like I saw the low compression as ideal...it wasn't so much a choice, rather what I had to work with and use being just a poor college student at the time. The long block was originally going to replace a 240,000 mile 318 Ramcharger I had...but I kept putting it off until the engine actually failed (it basically had no oil pressure, but kept on running). Well, by about 340,000 miles the body/interior was too far gone for me to really consider putting in a new engine hence I piked up the 350 dollar valiant to throw it in and run down at GLD for fun. All that really changed in the rest of the component was a different cam (222@ .050 cam vs a 204@ .050 cam).

Never really though about putting a SBC in a valiant. Haven't seen one in years that I could work with. I have stuck them in mustangs like every one else has done. Simple to do with a set of headers and motor mounts for a S-10 conversion. Those little soup can fox platforms really go fast with a mild small block with vortec heads, and their cheap to build.