Need a some old school chevy small block advice

[Drmedano]

I have a 1988 chevy suburban that my kids and I built a body for , lacking a better term, a bonding experience. The original 350 motor has spun a main bearing.

I picked up a 1988 firebird that was built and raced on the 1/4 strip. It has rebuilt, 1980 350, that originally came out of a corvette according to the engine id stamp. It is complete with valve covers, decked out with chrome parts, a billet aluminum distributor with an Accel hei supercoil and a 2 speed power glide transmission.

My plan so far is to have the ecu tuned and eliminate the egr system so I can use the shorty headers that are on the engine. Purchase an adapter plate from ebay to be able to run the tbi on the 4" edelbrock carberated manifold. Some years ago I put a high flow cat , single muffler to 3 inch dual exhaust that I plan on keeping by adapting the h pipe to the shorty headers.


Is there any big stumbling blocks to this plan? Will I be able to swap flex plates so I can use my existing 700r4? Are the oil pans and pickup tubes interchangeable? Will I have problems with oil pressure and water temperature sensors?

Thanks in advance.

 

[Bregner54]

Re: Need a some old school chevy small block advice

Use the older pan and pick up the newer style is a little different due to the rear main seal design ,as far as adapting the throttle body .. Reuse the 88 the intake , you will need to elongate the 4 mounting holes around the throttle body as they were drilled at a steeper angle than the old school heads use. I think it's 73 degrees instead of 45 degrees like the rest. Just use some rtv to prevent any vacuum leaks , I have done this on two of my older trucks without any issues. This way all the sensors and brackets that go with the injection will bolt up without any modification. No retuning required if you weld a bung onto the header tube and retain the smog fittings

 

[Eagle-co94]

Re: Need a some old school chevy small block advice

You might want to consider a different cam that'll give you more torque.