I have a 350 I'm rebuilding at the moment so I wanted some
Ideas, what are the cheapest ways to squeeze more HP and torque from this baby? (i want to make at least 400Hp at the wheel.) Thanks

                                      -M3

I can't relate 400 horsepower and cheap in the same sentence but get a copy of David Vizards book "How To Build Max Performance Chevy Small Blocks On A Budget". It's 15-20 bucks most anyplace like Amazon or Barnes and Noble and is a hell of a good read.

Bogie

Save your money. The book is good if you are going to do all the work your self. Go to this Web page for some good ideas. http://www.ryanscarpage.50megs.com/combos1.html  

This is just "monkey see. monkey do", which is OK I guess, but if you want to learn why things do what they do, read Vizard he gives you lots of hard won information.

Bogie

I don't know about your budget, but that's just what I need at this point. I'm not into forking over $200.00 in labor alone to an overpriced mechanic to remove the steering arm on the '77 K5 so I could install a suspension lift kit. I figured out how to do it, bought an inexpensive pickle fork tool and got that frozen *** off myself. I spent the $200.00 on other mods I wanted like new headers and complete exhaust system. I bought an inexpensive Mig welder and taught myself to weld on some scrap metal. It's in credible the amount of money I saved on labor for all these relatively easy mods. It was going to run me near about 1K for a complete custom exhaust system. True Dual from the engine back. I saved about half that amount just in labor.

Then you have to deal with shops whose mechanics are on something, so you may have to pay for the work to get done twice - like I did with my Tranny replacement a few years back from a big name national shop. I wouldn't trust these folks to fix a 10-speed bike, much less to lay hands on my beast again. I cut my losses and re-did the entire job at a shop a good friend of mine recommended. But there again you never know who's going to be working on your truck, or what sort of bad trip they had the night before you show up looking for a quality job.

My kid was in that field. He got sick of it and found another line of work. Mechanics at dealers are paid on commissions like salesmen almost. Some of the horror stories he would tell me about his shop would make your hair go white! If you want it done right you have to do it yourself, or really be able to trust a mech. The good ones are few & far between these days brother.

That's great! My brothers and I have done a lot of the work on the NOVA ourselves. I was talking about this book which I have.  A lot of the book talk's about porting heads like the 461 and 186 castings. You can get a good set of heads that out flow what he had done for 1,200 or less assembled, and if you want to do the porting then you have to buy another book on that. I bought a pair of Dart Pro1's for 1,250 from summit and love them. I don't now what M3Monsters budget is but it is easier to buy good stuff than to make crap work!  

If you wont the book go to www.cartechbooks.com should be about 23$ I have bought 3 books from them, lots to choose from. Good Luck.  

I here ya'll on shops, my wife had a late model Maxda 6 ES, what a hanger queen, that thing had recall after recall and it seemed that everytime it went in for warranty work they found/broke something else that always cost a few hundred bucks to fix. Once off warranty, it was one thing after another on top of the recalls. In the past year we put half again what it cost to keep it running. 

Shop work was sloppy at best, it seemed they always set it up for the next failure. We got rid of thing even though it didn't have many miles on it. We're still getting recall notices.

I could work on the old lady's car but everytime the next thing breaks she think's it's my fault, so I sent her to the dealer and let the two of them deal with the problems.

Bogie

'Been there and done that' with the father in law's '93 Taurus!- this had to be tha ultimate Ford lemon, or a reject fromt the new 'Christine' movie! Every time something went wrong it was at least $600.00 ! I didn't even want to touch the thing after a while. I thought the demon that posessed it might inhabit me next!

He finally traded it in at a dealer for a used Ford F150 pickup. I think he said they gave him $50.00 trade in credit for it. He ripped the dealership off at that trade in price. I'm sure!

The A/C compressor replacement alone cost him  1000.00 + , not to mention the radiator, fuel pump, power steering pump, alternator, etc...etc... ad nauseum!

I do the same with the wife now 'take your Japanese import to the shop'. I only work on my '77 K5 beast, and some on my DD S-10 truck.

I agree with you there, if he's going to be tweakin on the heads or technical things it's best to let a shop you can trust handle it, ulless you got the bucks for a few really good tech guides. A lot of tech manuals are written 'by engineers for engineers'. There's a whole lot of things that "are not in the book". My Kid used to use Mitchell on-demand (on-line mechanic's reference ) when he worked for a grease monkey shop. There's a lot of info not listed in there either he said.

'70's Nova's are cool! I had a '74 with a 350 and a rochester quadrajet in it. I could smoke the tires without even trying to. Power to weight ratio rules! Pretty much factory setup - I didn't have the money to build it at the time. I built up my '76 Cutlass years later, It was a pretty heavy car though. Almost half of it was hood it seemed. - Ya do with what ya got if you don't have the bucks.

I hear ya. Bought a book about Demon carbs, couldn't hardly understand it. Had alot of technical stuff in it, all I wanted to now was how to tune the carb! Love the carb thow!  

My dad had an SHO, same thing, one failure after another, especially electronic, one computer after another. No wonder Ford lost 5.8 Billion last quarter.

They keep talking of having the right vehicle for the market like they've got a selection problem at the dealer. What they've got is a lack of quality problem and untill or unless they start making something that will go for more than a week or two without expensive failures, they're doomed.

The advertising industry has convinced the auto industry that they can sell anything to anybody. Ford's current problem, which has been long lasting, shows that ain't true. If Ford put half as much money into fixing their quality problems as they spend on ad agencies telling us they have "quality built in", "quality is job 1" they'd be a lot better off. And GM isn't far behind on that point. Chrysler, my neighbor is a big shot with them and he won't even drive his company car out of town. He said "you can't trust it won't quit in the middle of no-where", so he drives a 10 year old Cherokee when ever he's going beyond the city limits. 

The way things are headed in Detroit, in a few more years we all be driving vehicles from God's own car company --- Toyota!

Bogie

I hear ya! The wife drives a 'yota and it's head & shoulders power and quality above my S-10. They both have roughly the same power plant 'cc wise - 1.8 vs a 2.2 but the yota has loads of power ( more like a good V6 than the 4-cyl it's got) Hauls @ss & the acceleration curve on the highway seems to have no end at times. The S-10 by comparison is a D.O.G. dog! - no power, no fuel economy - It eats a 1/4 tank of gas a day - I drive 80 miles round trip daily. The yota by comparison can go to Orlando and back to Palm Beach in less than 3/4 tank of gas. The yota is an overhead cam engine, as the Chevy is just, well, crap. The new 5-cyl's in the Colorados ( S-10 replacements ) are doing no better than the 4-cyl plants from what I hear on the street.

I'm a die hard American vehicle owner, and I hate that Detriot is doing this crap to itself. We've lost all respectability world-wide in vehicle manufacturing - in my opinion. Cars are made cheap by near-slave labor and we are charged exhorbitant prices for these crappy rides.

New trucks & cars rusting on the dealer's show-room floor are one of my pet peeves. How much extra cost could there possibly be in shooting a coat of paint on a new truck's drive shaft anyway ?? I wouldn't buy that crap at any amount, pesonally.

I drove new Chryslers for years. I can't blame your neighbor, I wouldn't trust it either. Folks like Iacocca and Rumsfeld may be financial whizz kids for the corp, but on the mean streets they all suck eggs!

I agree, Toyota, the Korean and Chinese builders will own the American motor vehicle world in a few short years.  Pride, ( and greed ) cometh before the fall.

Other than that I don't feel strongly on this subject     I apologize to everyone here for soap-boxing and high-jacking this thread.

Redbeast, love it! My old boss often said that every graduate of every American business school should be gathered back in the Econ building. Once there the building should be burnt and not even the screech of the cat in the basement should be allowed to escape.

I don't know what Bob had against cats?

Best thing you can do to an S-10 is put a 350 in it. I've got an 89 S-15, standard cab, short bed; it runs a 95 Vortec block with FB 385 heads, modified TPI injection, Sanderson shorty headers into duals, twin cats and glasspacks, a modified 4L60E gear box, 8.5 inch 3.08 posi, high pressure KYB shocks, lowered 2 inches, slapper bars and anti-sway on the rear, 4 wheel disks. It SMOGs but isn't technically legal because of the engine pieces and duals are something that nobody ever ran thru DOT, EPA, or CARB approvals, but Washington State only sniffs, if it's clean you pass regardless of how you get there. If it fails you're up a tree as the law says that if its stock and doesn't pass you get an exemption. So, I assume on the back side that means if it isn't stock you have to fix it or return it to stock. Anyway this beast weighs in at 3000 pounds, it hauls my butt from Seattle to Everett and back everyday on I-5 a distance of 30 miles each way and drops 20 MPG in my lap doing it. That's about 3-4 MPG better than it got with the Iron Duke 4 banger and 5 speed that was originally in it.

On Saturday nights we go hunting Beeemers, Lexi, Mercedes, and CIVICs with Borla mufflers, what the heck is that about?  Met one of these guys on the Interstate, he was running juice, it was pretty good but I hung his laughing gas motor out till it puked oil, coolant and hard parts all over the superslab. Last Saturday I totally smoked some squid in a Z350, life is good for an old man and his truck. If you're gonna have dual exhaust and a crappy attitude, then put some motor in it to back ya up is all I can say.

Best of Luck in the Global society. 

Bogie

Jeez ! He does hate cats! What did the cat ever do to him ? We should put all the grads of those business schools on a slow boat to China ( preferably the container all those manchurians came over in to this country the evening before ) so they can learn something over there and bring it back to the homeland so we can kick some financial @ss in this country again, and gain some respect back. They're just starting their industrial revolution over there these days - sweat shops, mercury poisoning, child labor, industrial run-off, cheap products for Walmart,  etc...etc...etc...

All these suits are so full of themselves they probably won't even notice until the Chapter-11 kicks in! ...you show up the next morning & there's a padlock on the door & instructions on where to call to have your last check mailed to ya.  Oh, and be sure to leave a forwarding address so they can mail you that Timex watch for your tenure !!

Maybe beadie eyed Bill Ford should have another 500 year celebration of the night of the bloody clubs with all the goons and future union reps at the Ford Plants. That did wonders for 'em back then! Profits soared!

Did you get the frame on that S-15 boxed ? I've heard some scary stuff about warpin the frame with that much power on S-10 and S-15's. I also get a kick out of the 4X4 crowd that wants to take a 4-banger S-10 and put 37's under it! How much should I tweak those torsion keys on that frond-end to get away with this mod ???? If brains were gunpowder they wouldn't have enought to light up a birthday cake!