65silververt

I did this conversion last January and February. The engine had been recently rebuilt with forged pistons, so we stuck with the original block and upgraded the cam to a hydraulic roller and the heads to AFR 180s.

I'll start with some before and after pictures and then go into the details of the conversion with pictures of the parts and the necessary modifications to make everything work.

- I dont have any pictures of the 350/365hp air cleaner installed. I did have to drill holes in it to make it clear the QuickFuel float bowl adjustment screws. It was a reproduction air cleaner assembly, so dont freak out.

BEFORE


AFTER


BEFORE


AFTER

65silververt

The AFR heads are absolutely worth the money in my opinion. They came set up with springs for the roller cam. I have used edelbrock heads in the past, but these are really worth the extra couple hundred dollars.







Intake Port



Exhaust Port

65silververt

Comp Cams Hydraulic Roller LIfters. Not cheap, but well worth the money.



Setting up the heads with lighter springs to test for Piston to Valve Clearance.





Everything checked out ok for clearance.



The only Draw Back to the AFR heads is a casting stub that interferes with the Rams Horn Manifolds and must be removed.
I decided to remove the stub once the heads, valve covers, and intake were installed so that i could seal everything up and would not need to disassemble the heads. This was not a wise choice, as it was not easy to work around obstacles in the engine bay.





Weapons of mass destruction used to remove casting stubs from the heads.

65silververt

This engine was originally a 327/250hp, so we decided to go ahead and upgrade the manifolds to 2-1/2". I hate to admit it, but i purchased the cheap Chinese manifolds from summit racing. The ports were very small, so i gasket matched them to the felpro gaskets. I also had to smooth out inside of the manifolds on the 1,8,2, and 7 ports. I spent about 3 hours per manifold.





[IMG][/IMG]

Before



After

kiwigt

Looks great !....subscribing....

65silververt

I decided to switch from the 461 intake to the Edelbrock performer EPS. The 461 has some really sharp turns when compared to the Edelbrock intake.

65silververt

Anyway, I couldnt be more pleased with the results. This car never had very much power even when upgraded to the 461 intake, carb, and 350hp cam. The 250hp heads were just was to restrictive/low flowing to create power and even though the heads had been previously changed out for edelbrocks, they did not provide much of a "seat of the pants" difference from the ported 250hp cylinder heads. That was a major shock to me.

I havent had it on the dyno yet, but i plan to do a few pulls in the future. The car will definitely leave a trail of rubber for quite some distance now.

The Quickfuel carb is awesome and i plan to use more of them in the future. Super easy to tune for peak performance. I cant say enough good things about AFR heads, the Edelbrock Intakes, and Quickfuel carbs.

kiwigt

Can you let us know the cam details please ?

65silververt

Comp Cams 12-423-8

My compression ratio came out to be around 9.4:1 with the 65cc heads, recommended gaskets, my deck height, and the 4 relief speed pro pistons. I would have preferred to have closer to 10:1, but I can probably run 89 octane if i want and considering the price of gas currently, i might try it.

http://www.summitracing.com/parts/CCA-12-423-8/


It's a little choppy at idle, but in my opinion, it's just right. This particular cam worked out well for this application and for these components. Sounds great with the 2-1/2 exhaust and magnaflow mufflers. The mufflers did not sound so great with the previous components.

Hitch

LOL.. looks like a carbon copy of my build except I used AFR 195 heads... Have you had it on the dyno yet? My build with a similar setup resulted in about 310 at the wheels...

6T7L71CPE

Looks great! Did you have any trouble with installing/adjusting the cam button with the short water pump? Any pics of this?

32361ARTHUR

I think you're sacrificing a lot of horsepower with the currant exhaust manifolds. Why not some decent headers? Looks great though.

65silververt

I did not have any issues at all with the cam installation. I just used a roller button and welded a thin plate to the back of the stock timing cover for reinforcement.

Now that i think about it, the last time i did a roller cam swap in a 327 I used an edelbrock waterpump. That particular pump had a bolt in it that could be adjusted to contact the front of the timing cover to prevent flex on the stock steel cover. I did not need to weld a reinforcement plate on that cover since i had the edelbrock pump with the bolt to keep the timing cover from flexing.

65silververt

I have seen several dyno results comparing shorty headers to ported rams horns and the difference was very small. I'm probably only sacrificing 5hp to the wheels overall. I really doubt the difference would be enough to feel in the seat of my pants. Also, i wanted to use the stock ignition shielding, which I obviously could not do if i went with shorty headers. Long tubes are out of the question.

Subfixer

When I built my 400 ci L76 clone, I had a similar issue with the Carb/Air Cleaner fitup due to the center hung floats. I was able to use the fuel bowls, transfer tube and choke stove from the old 2818 on the new 780 cfm Holley. Then the fuel lines, choke mechanism and air cleaner fit like OEM.

65silververt

That's definitely another option, but i sold off the 2818 and the winters intake to help pay the bills to summit racing. Plus, i wanted to keep the quickfuel carb the way it was with dual inlets and all one finish.

When the air cleaner is installed the car really does look like a stock 350hp/365hp engine. Obviously the trained eye will quickly spot the fuel line, thermostat housing, etc. but overall, i disguised it as best i could.

I tried to use spacers on the carb body, but there just wasnt enough hood clearance. If i had gone with a different intake manifold, i would have had major clearance problems. Glad i measured.

32361ARTHUR

I ran manifolds on my 383 when I first installed it against the builders advice, he said shorty headers wouldn't work much better than the manifolds but I didn't want to run long tube headers. I finally caved and ran long tube headers and the seat of the pants difference was AMAZING to say the least.

MarkC

Did you have a clearance problem with the EPS intake?

Mark

Kerrmudgeon

Great job! I ported and polished a set of angle plug head years ago, and that's quite the job....took a few days to match up all the ports. I had templates for the runners and ground them to fit.
Why are the AFR's rippled all the way through, is it for better flow?
Second....if you painted them chevy orange you would never tell they were there! Sleeper heads.

65tripleblack

Computer numerical control (CNC) port job. Much more exact than hand porting. Each set a carbon copy of all others. This is not recommended for old, iron heads because of too much casting variation and almost nobody writes programs for them (liability issue!).
CNC job leaves furrows. They can and should be hand ground and polished on the exhaust side. They are actually beneficial on the short radius wall and floor of the intake ports. The intake cylinder wall side and roof should be smoothed with 60 grit.