Building a 383 help
Hey all, sorry I had a family emergency and had to return to Ohio, thus the no return messages. I appreciate what everyone has been saying so far, since its causing so much confusion let me kinda change the topic slightly. Instead of beating my dads chevelle, just let me have your words of wisdom and parts about having a nicely running 383 that I could drive everyday and not hate, with a focus on acceleration over high end speed. Something that rteally gets up and goes when I step on the pedal, but not something that is going to destroy the engine, so I can keep the engine as long as I'd like and not blow it up. I saw where a few of you wrote the engine needs to be built around putting the power to the ground, I currently have a 4 speed and an 8 3/4ths 4;10 gear ratio rear end if that would help building the engine around that at all. This is going to be a when I have a spare couple hundred bucks buy some pistons or a cam, etc. So no set budget but obviously I'd like to see the price per performance gain. Thanks again for all the help.
Ok, let me ask this, are you going to stroke this or just run the as delivered displacement? AKA 383 plus any overbore if needed?
OK, if I was to do a street bound everyday 383 driver with some balls to it and since we now know it is backed by a 4spd & 4.10's, I would do something along these lines.
On the reuse of all stock parts, just add cam and headers with a 750 carb or your choice. In the event it needs a rebuild, I would use a HyperU slug and up the ratio to a max of 9.5-1. A good valve job and matched springs in the heads to the cam.
A Cams duration is listed by the sellers/manufacturers so you can see where you want to cruise, rpm wise.
I myself would look at a cam with approximately
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If the OE parts are being thrown to the side in favor of aluminum, then it would be another 1/2 point in compression (min.)
1 step up in cam size (236/
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Equippe with your aluminum heads, intake and enjoy. An example of EZ would be the Edelbrock rpm heads, intake & 800 carb.
FWIW, you can continue to shave a lot of weight via an aluminum W/P & housing.
IMO, though expensive but staying with EZ, a full TTI exhaust system.
A build like this works in a friendly rpm range on pump gas that is easy enough for everyday driving.
I did this very route on the wife's 360 powered Cuda. Less cam duration to better match the 3.23 gears. Runs on 87 and pulls long and hard way past 100mph. Sorry, is haven't had the room or time to find out top end speed. But I still had over 2500 worth of rpm left at over 100mph.
