Well I'm about to order the crate motor with all the hardwear for serpentine belt including ac, alt, ps, waterpump, starter, fuel pump, dist, flexplate, 750 holly, air cleaner, well, everything !!!!!!! for $5100 plus 300 shipping.
Anyone here of any problems with this gm 350 motor?
Or Sallee Chevrolet?
It is their # 12499710

Will this motor fit under the standard '78 hood? Someone please tell me now cause I really don't wan't to screw up the hood. I just don't know if the mounts are the same distance to the top of the air cleaner.

 

It depends on what manifold and air cleaner you use with the Holley.

 

Yes, it will fit nicely. We installed that exact motor last year in a 78 also. Holley carb, with a 3 inch element in a drop-base air cleaner. BTW, excellent choice...that engine rocks!

 

It comes with a duel plane manifold and what looks like about a 2-3 inch air filter. I'll check with dealer tomorrow......Thanks guys

 

Several guys around here have been disappointed by 350" ZZ motors in their street cars ... these motors tend to have rather poor TQ & HP in the typical rpm ranges used on street ... a problem compounded if running an automatic trans w/ stock convertor ... manual trans offers a bit more choice of gear. On street ... TQ is what gets you moving. Suggest you look at GMPP 383" motors ... HT383 or ZZ383. For about same $ or less you can have the HT383 ... no replacement for displacement.

 

Thanks Jackson, I be looking some more.

 

Yep. They DOOOOOO run great but not real torque monsters. OTOH, price and avaliablity is good. My stroker cost a lot more to build, but I custom tailored it to MY desires rather than mass production.

 

I put a ZZ4 385 hp w/alum. vortic heads. I am very happy with it. I'm not a pro at the track but I do enjoy a couple of passes at the corvette challange. It's no 11 second motor. But, it's great and alot fun. I also installed a 5 speed with overdrive 95 mph @ 2500 rpm's. Getting back to the ZZ4. The only thing that doesn't fit is the heat senser. You have to put the stock one in the top of the intake manifold just to the lift of the goose neck. Some say it will run 15 to 20 degrees cooler on your dash water temp gage. Thats fine my needle stays around 160 degrees and it's still fine when it goes to 180 in heavy traffic with A/C on. Also plenty of room under the hood with the L82 hood.

 

Had good results with both Sallee and this motor (Fastburn 385). Very knowledgeable and they are honest about the availability when new engines come out (unlike other dealers). Very good prices on lots of other parts brands. I used their machine shop to do the modifications on my Accel DFI/Lingenfelter intake for the Vortec-style heads and it turned out really nice. I did have to go with the L88 hood on my 69 though with this setup.

I liked this engine over the ZZ4 because the the heads are much better. Just adding the Hot LT4 cam and rockers will take you up to 430HP. Talk to Tom Sallee in the parts department and explain what you want. They have some other engines available including some with AFR heads that you might like more. Go for the dyno testing if you can afford it.

One last thing, listen to them when they say to run 1 3/4" headers! Also running a good undercar exhaust is important.

Lots of good info on their discussion board. Heed any postings by Scott, Bogie, and OBFG. Scott works in their engine shop, don't know who Bogie is, and OBFG is a GMPP rep that lurks.

 

Have you tried Scoggin Dickey in Lubbock? At least the shipping cost would be less. I bought my heads, intake, and cam from them. They matched some lower prices I had received elsewhere and their shipping costs were cheaper.

 

I bought the ZZ4 with the Hot Cam modification. It's supposed to be a little bit over 400 HP.. Also I bought the GM Performance Parts Serpenine kit with P/S only. It comes with a reverse rotation water pump (cast iron, which I replaced with an Edelbrock aluminim pump.) From what I've read, there doesn't seem to be a hood interference problem.

PS: The Serpentine kit will at first attempt, not fit a C3! But don't get excited. The interference is with the idler pulley in the Serpentine kit that is a substitute for the AIR pump. This pulley will interfere with the passengers side spring/control arm tower. There's a simple solution. The idler pully uses an cast aluminum bracket to attach to the Serpentine housing. Simply mount the bracket upside down. To do this you will have to grind about 1/8 inch of aluminum off of the pulley bracket.

The GM Performance Parts Serpentine kit is apparently the stock assembly that was mounted on 1991 and 1992 Camero's and Firebirds. The crank pulley has a really large diameter, and the alternator has a really small diameter. This means a lot of rotational losses. You can buy steel underdrive pulleys that will save you about 15 horsepower (or so the adverts say). In steel the underdrive pulleys sell for about $60. I bought March underdrive pulleys in aluminum. I bought a crank pulley, an alternator pulley, a P/S pulley and a water pump pulley. I think the aluminum pulleys were about $180.00. (March sells the steel pulleys also.)

The Serpentine kit P/S pump has metric high pressure hose threads. The stock english thread C3 PS hoses won't work. (Do 78 C3's have metric hoses?) One solution would be to have metric threads in the high pressure hose that connect to the pump, and english threads at the other end of the hose that mount to the control vavle. I haven't solved this problem yet. Getting a custome made high pressure hose is an obvious solution. Another of many small but time consuming problems.

 

You can just eleminate the AIR pump by buying a shorter belt (Dayco 968K6) and rerouting it, I am using this set up on Formula and have had it up to 6500 rpm's with no problems



I am also using an F-body serp set up on my vette and I also had to do a hose change to install my steeriods kit, I was going to get a whole new hose made but the shop did not have the metric fittings. I had the serp hose cut to length for reference and the shop just put a standard hose end on the side I had cut off so it screwed right into the steeriods rack. Sorry no pics of the hose.

 

Thanks for the info. I'll try running with the Dayco 968K6 belt also (and eliminate the AIR pump/idler pully.

 

Thanks guys, I really appreciate your input.
I setteled on the fastburn 385, 200r4, 3.90 rear, bcool with duel fans.
Should be enough for an old feller like me. Can hardly wait to get er in.

 

ZOOM!