Yesterday I picked up my steel crank, harmonic balancer and fly wheel. All nice and balanced. Stopped by the "head shop" to see if my heads were done and found out that they were. The guy did a little extra work on them, actually his son did it by accident. He polished the ports all the way up inside instead of only about 2 inches. I will be ordering the Edelbrock 3550 fuel injectoin unit later today or tomorrow and take it up to the shop doing the heads. He will "match and polish the ports" so there is no disruption in flow between the intake manifold and the heads. He also has a contact with a shop that has an engine dyno so I guess I will be dropping around $500.00 for a full day on the dyno. That has got to be the best way to correctly set up the fuel injection.
Hopefully I will begin building the bottom of the engine next week. I took some pics of the heads and will post them on this site ( see my pic sig for the link ).
I hope that the info I post on this project will help any of you who are thinking of buying a crate engine or rebuilding you current engine. The prices I post will be for the most part retail and I will designate which prices are not.

And when you're all done you're going to give it to me, right???

Sounds like it is going to be sweet.

For the right price, I will "give" it to anybody . I can't wait to get this in the car!

I can't wait to build an engine for my Vette. I'd like to start next summer or the year after. I can't decide if I want to stick with a small block or joing the big block club. There are so many different combinations out there its driving me nuts. One minuts its "stick with the 350", then its "turn it into a 383", then its "I want to drop a 427 in", and then its "well, if I'm gonna drop a 427 in, I might as well just drop in a 454." The good thing is I have plenty of time to think it over and decide. I have to rebuild my suspension first anyway. That starts this winter if I get my garage done.

I have been working with two speed shops on this project and both agree on one point. If you decide to buy a crate engine, you will end up doing head work and replacing the Cam to get it to full potential. They both claim that the crates ( short block ) rarely produce the advertized HP or torque so in the long run, it is just a cheap to build your own and get exactly what you want. Mine costs more than a crate because I decided not to reuse any of my original components. If I ever do sell the car ( which is doubtfull but for the right price anything is possible ), I want to be able to pull out the 454 and have it as a " turnkey " for something like a Chevelle or Camaro ( or another Vette :-) ).
So whether you do a small or large block, do a lot of investigating before you put out any money.

|UPDATED|8/19/2002 9:43:21 AM|/UPDATED|

My Edelbrock 3550 EFI unit came in the little brown truck today. This thing is awesome! . I am having some concerns about not being able to use my stock drop dish air filter base. There may be a clearance problem with the EFI unit. If I have to use a flat bottom air cleaner dish, then there may be a clearance problem with the hood. Yea, I know, if it was easy, it just wouldn't be fun.
I'm off the rest of the week, so I hope to have the bottom of the engine done by Friday and with any luck the shop that did the heads will have the EFI porting done by Friday also. I also hope to have the hood painted and on the car within the next two weeks. The engine goes to the engine dyno as soon as it is together. If it performs well, I install the fuel return line. THEN, when the weather gets cold, the car gets some anesthesia and the hood comes back off, the 427 and trans come out, the engine compartment gets detailed, engine and tranny go back in, the EFI wiring harness gets installed and I wait for a dry road day

I hate it when you make these posts ,,, I start this uncontrolable drooling . To say nothing of this strange green devil that sits on my shoulder and tells me to be jealous . Go for it , we are all waiting for your project to get done !

geo

George,
I've seen your car and I can't understand why you're jealous. Go slap your rear wheels on a dyno somewhere and then we can compare jealous to jealous

Nah ,,, I really do not want to be trampled to death by that monster your are assembling . I may buy stock in depends after you start driving it . As clint eastwood said a mans got to know his limitations !

gman

George, you probably already turn bigger numbers than I will. I took the EFI unit over to Spyder Prep Racing Heads so he could match ports between heads and intake. He said there is a ton of extra metal in the air runners and he will open them up more when he does the polishing. I did notice something you can not see in the advertising pictures. The air runners are like the "air gap " manifold. I definately will not be able to use the drop down lid for the air filter cause there are sensors and all kinds of hardware all over this thing. And you guessed it, I was so anxious to get it to Spyder that I forgot to take any pics. Oh well, I will when I get it back.