Firstly my thanks go to Norsky, Redwingvette and Gunslinger for their wise advice. Great looking cars guys. I'll have to a pic' of mine. Although I had intended to keep the original engine I am now going to "tweak" the original. All I have to do is find a reliable, reputable engine shop in southern Ontario. Any suggestions.

Hello Bill,

I would check local clubs for suggestions and then get a quote. After getting a quote, I would check with your local Chevy store and get prices on the 350HO and ZZ4 Crate motors. these are awesome engines for what I believe are prices that will beat most builders. I have the ZZ-4 and it is bullet proof. I have raced it numerous times and really rapped it out without a problem.

And all that with a warranty. The price to build a 350hp L-48 was on the order of $3800. The ZZ4 was $3400, It was a no brainer for me.

Alex

I've really gotta chime in on this one I bought a 71 L48 3 months ago, and had decided i wanted some heads, cam, intake, and carb installed, wanting to beef the power a little. When they went to rebuild it, they discovered a horibbly maintained engine, on the verge of failure. What did i do? I had em install a set of Dart iron eagle heads, holley 650 DB, K*N AF, Crane cam, comp roller rockers and a hi-rise intake. On top of that i had them bore it .30 over, and replace the stock pistons with a set of TRW 9.5.1 flattops. The later was a must do that i didn't intend on when buying the car, after discovering the degenerated state of the engine. I couldn't be happier with the results, as i'm making somewhere around 380-400hp at the crank. If you going to beef it up though, i can't stress enough that you get a good ignition system to start the fire. Hope this helps.... and encourages you

Brandon

Oh yea... don't forget about the exhast. I used dynomax headers pre-jethot coated for only 229$! Those and some new mufflers and the car sounds like something from the Daytona 500.... maybe not what you want, but it suits me

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I had looked into the ZZ4 motors as well as some of the others for sale on ebay and the likes. I guess i just liked being able to pick my components. That and i wanted more than 350hp. There is also the price to consider. Many places will give you a discount on labor if you have them build you the motor. Just be diplomatic. If they are hurting for business, i'm sure they would rather take your money (labor) and build a motor for you, as opposed to letting you give your money to chevy. The ZZ4's are some nice engines that had me teetering on the edge for a while. Good luck and no matter what you do you wont regret it!

Brandon