Thought I would start a thread, unfortunately I can't upload photos at this time, looks like the format on my phone isn't right.
I bought the truck about 8 months ago, it's in extremely good shape, very straight, new paint and interior.
The origional, tired, 360 is still lumbering away under the hood. 100% stock in all its 2bbl lazy C6 slush box glory. Not sure what gears are in it, need to crawl under and look, hopefully the tag is still there. Seat of the pants tells me it's probably got 3.73 -4.11 gears. Think those were the common offerings in the camper special.
A rather heavy wooden box arrived at the shop a few weeks ago, inside is a shiny new block from BBM. I haven't had time to do more then pop the top off the box, but I can tell you the underside of the block looks awesome. Beefy as hell with ARP main studs and cross bolts, the screw in frost plugs appear to be stainless steel, and really pop against the gloss black paint.
The plan is to build a big stroker, 520 or maybe a 527 ( 527 has a nicer ring to it... ) depends on how big I can safely go on the bore while leaving enough room for a rebuild down the road if needed.
I've been told 520 (4.35 bore - 4.375 stroke ) is a safe bet.
Going to be giving Blair Patric a call soon about a set of heads. I work out in the feild, where we're at now there is no cell service at all, driving me nuts.
Going to be using one of Jays intake adapters as well.
I'm still waffling a bit on exactly the temperament of the motor. Years of building small block motors for street use has probably jaded me a bit. With small blocks, we always tried to use aftermarket heads when possible, but we usually went with the small port offerings, same with the cams, good aftermarket grinds, but small by most bench racer standards. These motors generally were a blast to drive on the street, well mannered and addictingly fun throttle responce.
That is what I want for this truck, except I also would love to get at least 600hp out of it just for bragging rights. Well, bragging rights and I want to blow the doors off of every dodge cummins I see with the massive "CUMMINS" sticker in the back window and billowing so much black smoke that incoming flights have to be re-routed.
Having only ever built one 500+ cube motor, a stock headed 460 for towing, I'm a bit out of my element with this motor.
My instinct is to put a very mild cam in it and call it good. But I'm thinking that I could easily step it up a notch or two, with so much torque available I figure low end throttle responce is not going to be a problem. Spinning the wheels every time I breath on the throttle might be though.
So I'm wondering how big of a cam ( hydraulic roller of course ) I can put in the motor yet maintain good idle quality. Idle doesn't need to be rock solid at 600rpm, but I don't want a choppy, surgy 900 rpm idle either.
My thinking is that it might actually be easier to drive if I move the torque curve up a little.
Lots of time to sort that out though.
I'm also planning on putting sequential port fuel injection on it, that should also help the idle out, but to what extent I'm not sure.
Lots of other fun stuff planned for this, even though it's going to be a relatively tame engine, I still want to make it as good as reasonably possible. Ceramic coatings, highest reasonable compression ratio, modern rings etc. all the little bits add up and I don't want to get it finished and regret leaving something on the table.
Any input is more than welcome.
Hopefully soon I can get some pics posted.
