[colincamaro]

I have an old two bolt main 350 that I pulled from an el camino not to long ago. The previous owner put a thumper cam in and I believe (other than the rebuild) that's all that was done. I had it dyno'd a while back and it made 285hp with 320 rwt. Without going crazy with upgrades what can I do to suck some more power out of this engine? Its in a 67 camaro with the original rearend (factory built for a 2 barrel 327 and powerglide with 3.01 gears in the back) so I realize that I can't go extreme without changing out a lot of parts that might break with the added power. But could I make it close to 400 hp with some nice heads, new intake, etc? Just trying to feel out my options short of just getting a new engine. Thanks again,

colin

[cool rockin daddy]

Do a forum search on Vortec heads.

[sbcboys417]

I hav a 30 over 350, 4 bolt main with vortec heads (96 to98 chevy), and a .494 flat tappet cam, with a 3600 neal chance 9 inch convertor..my headers are 1 5/8in tubes to 3in collector with straight x pipe. Victor jr high rise and holley 650 double pumper..turbo 350..my motor dyno'd at 428 h.p to the rear wheels..its in a swb chevy truck with 4.11s and a 200 shot and went 11.98 in a 4500lb truck..theres many different options out of a small block..it depends on how much cash u wanna put into it tho.

[my87Z]

is there still a PG transmission in it?
if so that "3.01" and the 1.82:1 first gear make for a real dog off the line. i would suggest if you only drive it on the street, to switch out to a th350. and whether you do that or not, the very first thing i would do is change those rear gears to say around 3.73:1. that will wake up that car real fast.

if you have 285hp/ and 320rwtq (i assume that since the tq #'s were rear wheel numbers that so where the hp #'s) then that is acutally about 350hp/400tq at the flywheel which is very respectable for a street cruiser. you seriously need to look into the trans and gears before messing with the car. it may cost you 1500-2000 (on the high side) to change to a th350, get a set of 3.73's and rebuilt the rear end. you should do this before messing with the motor because afterwards you may like the car just as is.

if you need to make more power after changing the gears and trans then look into changing out that garbage thumper cam (all sound and no action) and find around a 226-232° @ 050 hyd roller cam, and a set of 180cc heads (such as RHS, EQ, Profiler, and DART), you should already have a decent dual plane intake such as the performer rpm, and a 650 cfm carb (preferabley vac sec), make sure you have a decent set of headers and a non restrictive exhaust, and a simple aftermarket 50k-65K volt HEI distributor will do fine. assuming that you have a good short block to start with and that your compression is around 9.5:1 to start with, this should put you around 415hp/420tq.