Hey guys i need a little help with trying to find good motor parts for my 383 stroker i’m going to be putting in my 1986 chevy c10 i got a 350 4 bolt main block that i’m gonna have bored to a 383 stroker so any suggestions? i’m starting fresh with a bare block so i need everything, also for a reasonable price. Thanks!
puckettc10
Security Measure | eBay
check out skip's kits ,but you need to figure out what heads ( CC Size) you are going to use so u can get the piston dome correct for the Combustion Ratio
What type of performance are you after with your truck?
Hot Street? Cruiser? Raptor eater?
What trans do you have?
Hot Street? Cruiser? Raptor eater?
What trans do you have?
Wow I should do I write up in Knowledge base as this is building 383’s is so common.
Kits can be good but they push you in certain directions. They usually include a cast modular or steel crank great for the street including hard pickup truck work. Usually somebody’s 5240 or 4340 forged alloy rods, and forged pistons. Typically these are externally balanced and depending on your block can be had in one or two piece seal designs. These are fine but like I said take you in certain directions.
For the street and actually heavy duty work applications and occasional racing cast cranks are fine. If you’re going to flog the engine hard a 5140 or 4340 forging is better, with the 4340 being the superior choice.
Racing at RPMs around 6000 and higher not only is a forging better but so is internal balancing. To this extent a forging tends to feature heavier counterweights which makes getting to internal balance without Mallory metal slugs a lot easier. In addition even with a cast crank the odds of getting to internal balance are pretty good when using a 6 inch con rod and matching piston. The shorter piston looses weight faster than the longer rod gains it so there usually is a significant weight reduction of the reciprocating masses.
Rods typically fall into the 400’s 5.56 inches and related pistons, or the classic Chevy 5.7 and its piston or the 6.0 inches and its pistons. The rod length impacts the pin position in the piston which changes the compression height of pin center to crown and the skirt length for counterweight clearance at BDC. So piston and rod length generates a married couple. Their are other rod lengths but the three I sight are the most common. Rod design of the cap retention gets in here. Except for the short bolt 5.56 rod the longer rods that use bolt and nut attachment for the cap require more relieving be done to the block and the rod for pan rail, cylinder extension into the crank case and the upper rod bolt and side of the shank where the bolt passes in its bore. I’m not real enthusiastic about grinding here. Rod designs that use a cap screw to attach the cap to shank most often require little to no grinding on the rod and certainly none on the bolt‘s head,,, a much happier situation in my psychotic mind. Every rod does not need cam relief generally it’s the cam facing side as you wold see the rod passing under the cam of rods 1-2-5-6. There is the option of a reduced diameter core cam but this gets into the already wobbly Chevy cam having even less strength. This not too much a problem with milder cams and their respective valve train components but where heavy valve springs are required these smaller diameter cams start having some serious problems. So there is a lot to be said for starting with a cap screw rod. You also need to figure if you’re going racing that a longer push rod is required so longer promotes flex which has to be met with either or both thicker, heavier materials or those of higher strength material. The accepted clearance is not less than .050 inch. You’ll find this is a pretty common value.
The block usually requires relief along the pan rail but this varies by casting number and year. Generally castings prior to 1974 are thicker and require more relief here than newer castings. Starting in 86 the block was changed for a one piece rear seal, powder forged rods and hyper-eutectic pistons. These blocks and cranks are different on their back ends to accommodate this change. The bore extension into the crankcase was eliminated as hyper pistons are much stronger than earlier casting alloys and run with much tighter clearances so the skirts were shortened thus no longer needing the extended bore wall for BDC support. So 86 and up blocks are likely not to need much if any clearance grinding in the area where the crankcase blends with bores. Also, with these blocks increasingly as you move toward 1996 you find anything from rough provision castings to completely finished provisions for roller cams even in many truck blocks that came with a flat tappet cam. These are highly desireable blocks as they open the door to the much less costly factory roller cam that uses a positive cam thrust plate for the step nose roller cam. The type head between aluminum or iron does much to drive piston selection and whether or not to deck the block beyond s minimal cleaning cut.
Head selection drives so many other things. The basic question is aluminum or iron not the only question but I gotta start somewhere.
Aluminum moves heat faster than iron so in some ways it is more tolerant of under optimizations than iron, but to get the most out their potential you need to press the limits pretty hard. Mechanically aluminum has a greater rate of thermal expansion and contraction and is a softer material than iron. This shows a wear preference for composite head gaskets rather than single sheet shim gaskets. The reason is as it heat and cools it rubs the gasket surface which wears grooves into the aluminum especially at the fire ring. So they work longer and better with a composite gasket that has the ability to deal with the differing thermal characteristics of aluminum heads bolted to iron blocks by the gasket absorbing the resultant forces through the gasket thickness. But this leads to a thicker than shim style gasket with a out the thinnest being .026 to .028 inch thick. Add to that it is common to find composite head gaskets for the SBC up to .053. Now we like to keep squish/quench clearance between the piston’s flat crown and the chamber step at .035 to .040 inch. Given that Chevy specs .025 between the piston crown edge and the head deck of the block, suddenly the best you can hope for with a .026 gasket is an SQ clearance of .051 while with the .053 thick gasket common to the L98 and LT1/4 engines your at .078. The answer to getting back toward the optimized clearance is to either purchase raised crown (compression height in technical terms) which tend to be .020 inch taller to cut the difference to .005 plus the gasket thickness. Or you can mill the deck to zero out, or nearly so, the .025 factory crown to deck clearance. Either of these allows a much wider gasket choice as there are available between .026 and .053. Iron head’s don’t bring this problem, in fact if they have good surfaces they are happy with a shim gasket where piston to deck of .025 plus a shim gasket at .015 is .040 total clearance and a .019 is only .044 in total. The only downside of iron is it will hold your max static compression ratio to around 9.5 on corner station premium because of its heat transfer characteristics and of course two iron head’s are 40 pounds heavier and about a third less costly than a pair in aluminum. So here we are ripping up pages of math scribbles from a paper pad trying to figure which pistons and block machine operations go with which head, while all we wanted to do is explore eBay roller rockers. But this is optimization which the average rotating assembly kit may or not provide till you do all of this ciphering stuff first. Now it may be your local machine shop engine builder as already done this and knows just what parts fill his/hers recipe.
I’m going to stop for a while, the point I hope you get is that this configuration stuff is a back and forth process, every part selection affects several other parts and machine processes.
Bogie
Kits can be good but they push you in certain directions. They usually include a cast modular or steel crank great for the street including hard pickup truck work. Usually somebody’s 5240 or 4340 forged alloy rods, and forged pistons. Typically these are externally balanced and depending on your block can be had in one or two piece seal designs. These are fine but like I said take you in certain directions.
For the street and actually heavy duty work applications and occasional racing cast cranks are fine. If you’re going to flog the engine hard a 5140 or 4340 forging is better, with the 4340 being the superior choice.
Racing at RPMs around 6000 and higher not only is a forging better but so is internal balancing. To this extent a forging tends to feature heavier counterweights which makes getting to internal balance without Mallory metal slugs a lot easier. In addition even with a cast crank the odds of getting to internal balance are pretty good when using a 6 inch con rod and matching piston. The shorter piston looses weight faster than the longer rod gains it so there usually is a significant weight reduction of the reciprocating masses.
Rods typically fall into the 400’s 5.56 inches and related pistons, or the classic Chevy 5.7 and its piston or the 6.0 inches and its pistons. The rod length impacts the pin position in the piston which changes the compression height of pin center to crown and the skirt length for counterweight clearance at BDC. So piston and rod length generates a married couple. Their are other rod lengths but the three I sight are the most common. Rod design of the cap retention gets in here. Except for the short bolt 5.56 rod the longer rods that use bolt and nut attachment for the cap require more relieving be done to the block and the rod for pan rail, cylinder extension into the crank case and the upper rod bolt and side of the shank where the bolt passes in its bore. I’m not real enthusiastic about grinding here. Rod designs that use a cap screw to attach the cap to shank most often require little to no grinding on the rod and certainly none on the bolt‘s head,,, a much happier situation in my psychotic mind. Every rod does not need cam relief generally it’s the cam facing side as you wold see the rod passing under the cam of rods 1-2-5-6. There is the option of a reduced diameter core cam but this gets into the already wobbly Chevy cam having even less strength. This not too much a problem with milder cams and their respective valve train components but where heavy valve springs are required these smaller diameter cams start having some serious problems. So there is a lot to be said for starting with a cap screw rod. You also need to figure if you’re going racing that a longer push rod is required so longer promotes flex which has to be met with either or both thicker, heavier materials or those of higher strength material. The accepted clearance is not less than .050 inch. You’ll find this is a pretty common value.
The block usually requires relief along the pan rail but this varies by casting number and year. Generally castings prior to 1974 are thicker and require more relief here than newer castings. Starting in 86 the block was changed for a one piece rear seal, powder forged rods and hyper-eutectic pistons. These blocks and cranks are different on their back ends to accommodate this change. The bore extension into the crankcase was eliminated as hyper pistons are much stronger than earlier casting alloys and run with much tighter clearances so the skirts were shortened thus no longer needing the extended bore wall for BDC support. So 86 and up blocks are likely not to need much if any clearance grinding in the area where the crankcase blends with bores. Also, with these blocks increasingly as you move toward 1996 you find anything from rough provision castings to completely finished provisions for roller cams even in many truck blocks that came with a flat tappet cam. These are highly desireable blocks as they open the door to the much less costly factory roller cam that uses a positive cam thrust plate for the step nose roller cam. The type head between aluminum or iron does much to drive piston selection and whether or not to deck the block beyond s minimal cleaning cut.
Head selection drives so many other things. The basic question is aluminum or iron not the only question but I gotta start somewhere.
Aluminum moves heat faster than iron so in some ways it is more tolerant of under optimizations than iron, but to get the most out their potential you need to press the limits pretty hard. Mechanically aluminum has a greater rate of thermal expansion and contraction and is a softer material than iron. This shows a wear preference for composite head gaskets rather than single sheet shim gaskets. The reason is as it heat and cools it rubs the gasket surface which wears grooves into the aluminum especially at the fire ring. So they work longer and better with a composite gasket that has the ability to deal with the differing thermal characteristics of aluminum heads bolted to iron blocks by the gasket absorbing the resultant forces through the gasket thickness. But this leads to a thicker than shim style gasket with a out the thinnest being .026 to .028 inch thick. Add to that it is common to find composite head gaskets for the SBC up to .053. Now we like to keep squish/quench clearance between the piston’s flat crown and the chamber step at .035 to .040 inch. Given that Chevy specs .025 between the piston crown edge and the head deck of the block, suddenly the best you can hope for with a .026 gasket is an SQ clearance of .051 while with the .053 thick gasket common to the L98 and LT1/4 engines your at .078. The answer to getting back toward the optimized clearance is to either purchase raised crown (compression height in technical terms) which tend to be .020 inch taller to cut the difference to .005 plus the gasket thickness. Or you can mill the deck to zero out, or nearly so, the .025 factory crown to deck clearance. Either of these allows a much wider gasket choice as there are available between .026 and .053. Iron head’s don’t bring this problem, in fact if they have good surfaces they are happy with a shim gasket where piston to deck of .025 plus a shim gasket at .015 is .040 total clearance and a .019 is only .044 in total. The only downside of iron is it will hold your max static compression ratio to around 9.5 on corner station premium because of its heat transfer characteristics and of course two iron head’s are 40 pounds heavier and about a third less costly than a pair in aluminum. So here we are ripping up pages of math scribbles from a paper pad trying to figure which pistons and block machine operations go with which head, while all we wanted to do is explore eBay roller rockers. But this is optimization which the average rotating assembly kit may or not provide till you do all of this ciphering stuff first. Now it may be your local machine shop engine builder as already done this and knows just what parts fill his/hers recipe.
I’m going to stop for a while, the point I hope you get is that this configuration stuff is a back and forth process, every part selection affects several other parts and machine processes.
Bogie
The skip white kits are very nice, especially if you dont need or want to 'zero deck' the block. Externally balanced rotating assemblies are totally fine for a basic street/strip beastie. I wouldn't crank one to 6000rpm all weekend long, but people do.
Scat 9000 series cranks are very reliable for 500hp and less. "Capscrew" rods, as Bogie alluded to above, are your friend. A 5.7 inch rod is fine; 6" might be better suited to your application though. Bogie also mentioned a "reduced diameter core" cam. You'll see that mentioned in catalogs as a "small base circle" cam. Realistically, some of the guys here have built so many of these, if you supply the group with your ideas on how the car will be used; we'll have a rough idea of the cam parameters and if you can avoid the smaller cam diameter to swing the rotating assembly past.
Heads? Gosh, theres such a glut of good heads on the market, and we all have our favorites. But, I'm going to guess, unless this is a super tight budget, towing/truck engine; theres no point to going iron anymore. And with a 383, you'll typically see a head sized in the 185 - 220 range; with most 383s on the road needing less than 200.
Truly, tell us more about your car and what your plans are, and we can help more
Scat 9000 series cranks are very reliable for 500hp and less. "Capscrew" rods, as Bogie alluded to above, are your friend. A 5.7 inch rod is fine; 6" might be better suited to your application though. Bogie also mentioned a "reduced diameter core" cam. You'll see that mentioned in catalogs as a "small base circle" cam. Realistically, some of the guys here have built so many of these, if you supply the group with your ideas on how the car will be used; we'll have a rough idea of the cam parameters and if you can avoid the smaller cam diameter to swing the rotating assembly past.
Heads? Gosh, theres such a glut of good heads on the market, and we all have our favorites. But, I'm going to guess, unless this is a super tight budget, towing/truck engine; theres no point to going iron anymore. And with a 383, you'll typically see a head sized in the 185 - 220 range; with most 383s on the road needing less than 200.
Truly, tell us more about your car and what your plans are, and we can help more
My advice is to listen to these folks. Get a solid plan together, a real idea of what you want out of the motor/truck, a budget for what you can spend and buy the best parts you can within that budget. You can waste a lot of money if you don't. Ask me how I know. At least you are starting with a 383. Unlike me, 350 to 355 to 383. All different motors but certainly a lot of wasted money to get what I was looking for. Camshaft and head selection are critical. Do as much research as you can. It's not just something you can select out of a catalog because the numbers look decent. It all needs to match, and work with each other. There is certainly a science to it. I'm assuming this is a carb motor? Carb tuning makes a huge difference as well. Four corner idle adjustment carb is basically a must in my opinion when using a "radical" cam. Especially one with a tighter LSA. David vizard has a decent book on building a SBC on a budget. It's a good read either way. If you using a Holley carb he has a good book as well, but Dave Emanuel's book is much better in my opinion. Read both or all three. It's worth the time.
fstar, please dont post.
Pucket you start with your budget?
buy the best you can afford of course. What you buy depends on what performance numbers you want. You cannot have maximum HP with a shoestring budget. Give us as many details as possible.
Common questions will be; what do you expect the finished product to deliver. THe truck will have a specific purpose?
We can get you there or help set you straight when you consider your total budget? Dont forget better brakes, nicer wheels and performance tires, posi diff, transmission performance parts, suspension,,,EXHAUST!
Pucket you start with your budget?
buy the best you can afford of course. What you buy depends on what performance numbers you want. You cannot have maximum HP with a shoestring budget. Give us as many details as possible.
Common questions will be; what do you expect the finished product to deliver. THe truck will have a specific purpose?
We can get you there or help set you straight when you consider your total budget? Dont forget better brakes, nicer wheels and performance tires, posi diff, transmission performance parts, suspension,,,EXHAUST!
Dear Moose,
At least be decent enough to give us all at least one reason to go with such a stupid opening statement. From what i gather you seem to have answered near nothing with regards to the OPS actual question. just a bunch of generic rhetoric that applies to any build instead of anything he can take for consideration.
At least be decent enough to give us all at least one reason to go with such a stupid opening statement. From what i gather you seem to have answered near nothing with regards to the OPS actual question. just a bunch of generic rhetoric that applies to any build instead of anything he can take for consideration.
-
?
-
?
-
?
-
?
-
?
-
?
-
?
-
?
-
?
-
?
-
?
-
?
-
?
-
?
-
?
-
?
-
?
-
?
-
?
-
?
