The earlier 360 (71-73) 360 blocks would be best for a blown engine. That said, any of them will work. They are thicker than most give them credit for. As I told you in yahoo, I took an 80s 360 and punched it .070" over for a 416 build. That engine is still in VIc Pullen's Ramcharger right up the road from Bruce in Byron. Maybe you should go see it. It's badass. I built that engine with all the 340 stuff. Heads, cam intake good manifolds and a 1000 CFM Thermoquad that David at Demon Sizzler built up for me. It has gobs of bottom end grunt like you won't believe. I won't say I doubt Moparkid's statement.......I'll just say I'd like to see the evidence he has to back it up. And I don't mean that disrespectfully, I just wanna see the evidence. Not just some "Joe Blow's motor blew up, blah blah blah......" The block pretty much just sits there and houses everything. What's most important about an engine.....especially a high performance engine of ANY kind, including a blown one is how it is balanced. The balance of an engine is perhaps the number one most important thing as far as I'm concerned. I'm buildin a little 305 for a guy now.....but I'm not balancing it. The money's not in his budget. Is it important? Well, yeah, a little. Will it be detrimental not doing it? No. This particular build is not much off stock and going back together with everything it came apart with except new pistons and bearings. The pistons are high quality Speed Pros and are weight matched. However, what we are doing with this engine is about the limit I would recommend building one without balancing. I mean.....it was already balanced from the factory. All we did was put different pistons in the equation and they are a matched set. Reeves RPM Performance in Warner Robins does a balance for 250 plus any mallory metal. That's pretty danged affordable. The better the balance job, the more capacity an engine has to make power. Now, before I get flamed for saying the block doesn't matter......I didn't say that. But the engine you're talking about building will probably not see 700 HP. A good, stock properly prepared block will be just fine at that level as long as the guts are balanced VERY well by a PRO like Steve Reeves. He KNOWS what he's doing. I would go so far as to say he's the best in Georgia, including Atlanta. He might be the best east of the Mississippi. If you don't believe a stock block will hold up, then I invite you to come down to the Reynolds Silver Dollar Raceway and see for yourself how many stock blocked cars are dragging their rear bumpers past the 60 ft line on a Friday night. Talk to their owners. MANY of them have been running like that for several seasons. I gotta friend from high school who had a STOCK bottom end 302 ford in a fox body rustang. had soma kinda alloy heads on it and a good intake and big carb. He ran a Vortec suprecharger and that car ran 10s for like five or six seasons, PLUS served street duty. He finally pulled it to "upgrade" to a stroke 347 and guess what? The car slowed down! LMAO. True story. In fact, I THINK that motor is still runnin with just a carb on it now. I'll have to ask my friend Kirk when I talk to him again. At any rate, just remember, preparation, GOOD parts choices, EXCELLENT machine work, GOOD balancing and a real honest BLUEPRINTED assembly are what's important. IF you want me to be involved with this build, we'll be consulting experts all along the way to make SURE we do everything dead right.
