History of Monte's Powerplant

The original engine was a 400 that Dad replaced with the 350 below out of his 1972 Monte Carlo.

The first engine I pulled with Dad when I was 14.  It had a lot of miles on it and needed a freshening up before I could make use of it.  Dad didn't do anything but a R/V cam, Edelbrock S.P.2.P. intake, and slightly domed pistons.  

That is bird seed on the #1 piston top where mice had somehow gotten inside the long sitting engine and made a home.  

Dad and I changed a few things around including some block checking work, remanufactured cylinder heads from Performance Chevy out of Arizona, Dynomax full-length headers, ProForm Roller tip stamped steel rockers, flattop hypereutectic pistons, and a slightly used COMP .454 lift cam, lifter, and pushrod setup from our good friend Jimmy.  I later bought a used Edelbrock Performer RPM intake, converted to an HEI distributor, ProForm Noisy Gear Drive, and bought an Edelbrock AVS Thunder Series 650 carb, nothing special.

The black coating on the headers seemed to flake off with my fingers so I decided to sandblast them and spray them with a nice high-temp coating from Eastwood.  

Here was putting my new distributor and spark plug wires on the old engine.  Brand new Mallory HEI distributor which turned out to fail on me.  I took the distributor cap off after driving a couple thousand miles down the road and there were brass shavings all inside the cap.  Mallory told me to take the rotor off and you'll probably find where the centrifugal advance bushings are shot.  And so they were.  I ended up sending it back and spending an extra hundred bucks for a Ready to Run MSD distributor and Blaster SS coil.  

During the Fall/Winter of 2004, I tore my 350 down because I had really low compression on cylinders one, three and five and had some exhaust smoke on hard acceleration.  Prior to this, I broke a couple rockers and bent a couple pushrods and broke two rocker arm studs and I knew there had to be a problem.  When I had this head off, I pulled the valves out and had to really pull on them to find that brass shavings came out with the valves from the guides.  

I did all the port matching myself.  My teacher looked at these heads and said the bowls have already been smoothed so I wanted to see how I could improve these heads before getting a valve job.

So I went ahead and got new set of Manley swirl, necked down, race valves, COMP 1.480'' valve springs, cups, and titanium 10º   retainers and super lock keepers, and had Marks Small Machine put new bronze valve guides in.  I took the heads into school where my teacher showed me how to do my own 3 angle valve job.  My teacher, Jack, lent me his spring shims and valve spring height tools and I set my valve spring heights with the help of a few friends in my back garage.  

Before I decided to put the heads back on the engine, I decided since I had the oil pan off anyway to put a new gasket on, that I would take out a piston from one of the low compression cylinders just to make sure nothing was wrong.  I popped the number one piston out and saw two tiny fractures between the top and middle rings. I brought the piston inside to show my dad and grabbed a pen to poke at it, and the whole ring land came off on that section between the two fractures!  Later on after disassembling the entire engine, I found that the other two cylinders that had low compression had the same thing happen to their pistons. Below you can see a crappy picture of one of the pistons I pulled  and the section mission on the piston is bumpy and shiny, circled in red.  The piece of the piston that came off is circled in blue. Sorry the picture is so bad: 

So that night, I pulled the engine and tore it down.  I found several lobes on the cam that were wiped also.  I thought "Well, what not a better time to build the engine this car really needs."  So after several weeks, I got a bunch of prices and decided I was going to build a 383 stroker.  I figured my costs would be a little over $2,000.  Boy, was I way off.  

So I asked the parents if it would be okay if I can borrow some money and I told them what my plans were and they said it was okay.  So I sent my old 350 block out to have Mark look at it and he showed me where that block was repaired (coolant leak, maybe) on the deck once before and suggested I use a different block if I can find it.  I also used up a little of his time asking him everything I wanted to know about building this particular engine.  I wanted to build a bottom end that I could abuse with lots of power and not have to worry about any future add-ons.  I was tired of breaking stuff like my old engine and if I had a strong bottom end, I can always add better things up top such as aluminum heads, supercharger, bigger carb if need be and so on.  The top end is much easier and cheaper to do than a bottom end so I wanted to make sure the bottom end would last. Anyway, Mark at Mark's Small Machine in Westminster was the biggest help and I would recommend him to anybody.  I also wanted to build something that I wouldn't have a problem using lower octane fuel when necessary and that would be fine to hop in a drive whenever I wanted to.  It's a car and I want to treat it they way it was designed to be treated, and enjoyed.  

 

Round 2-- 383 Stroker

March-April 2005

I ended up using a factory 350 block that Dad had in the garage since we've been living in the house and cleaned it up and stripped it, then took it to Mark.  He decked it, bored to .030'', line-bored, installed the splayed main caps, clearanced the block, installed the pistons on rods, magnafluxed, cleaned, and installed cam bearings and brass freeze plugs.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

Did most of the 383 assembly by myself and Willie, John, and Josh chipped in a bit.  Mark got most of my parts for me and I took care of the gaskets.  He got me a internally balanced all forged Scat kit with dished SRP pistons and H-Beam ARP equipped rods that he balanced each individually himself.  I gave him my next-to-new harmonic balancer and he got me a Scat SFI flex plate so he could balance everything.  I selected a mild COMP Xtreme 262 Cam with .462/.469'' lift and matching lifters and magnum pushrods.  Mark also got me King bearings, and PBM file-fit rings and billet timing set.  

I file-fit the rings by myself and learned a lot doing it for the first time, which took quite some time.  You can see the splayed caps that Mark did an excellent job on.  I had to bend the mini built-in oil dipstick tube just enough to clear the new larger main cap.  

Everything came together in about a month or less.  I had a new set of Patriot Clipster headers and sent them out to have Jet-Hot coat them and they came out great and they still look the same.  The collectors on my old Dynomax long tubes would scrape speed bumps so I needed to try something else.  I used all ARP stainless steel fasteners which cost a pretty penny but are well worth it because I've see their black oxide bolts rust before and they don't look good.  Another new addition is the full roller Harland Sharp 1.6 rockers which brought the cam lift up to .496/.500''.  I changed the old rocker studs from 3/8'' to 7/16'' which are what these rockers were made for also.

Coming together nicely! I sanded a few odds and ends and painted them GM Ultra Silver including the intake, motor mounts, Milodon Oil pan (Now I have a Moroso), fuel pump, power steering pump bracket, and starter.  I learned that good idea is some type of heat shield for the starter if you have headers.  I got my heat wrap from Thermo-Tec. 

I love it.  Not too flashy, no chrome to rust, but a clean simple look.  And yes, it runs as good as it looks.  That header gasket you see is really that thick.  They're made by Percy's from Summit and they're about $40 made out of dead soft aluminum.  Suppose to be reusable but I haven't had any need to find out!  Fel-Pro one piece oil pan gasket from Advance. 

Plenty of room to work!  Notice the Motorvation 1'' carb spacer, stainless ARP studs and stainless heater hose fittings made by Performance Stainless.  I actually have enough room to pull my entire camshaft out without taking the radiator out.  I know this because I did with my old 350 when I was installing my new gear drive and rockers.  I added a little touch to the valve covers to make them my own.  They're the everyday $60 set from a place who sells them at Carlisle with a set of Chevy Impala cross flags I attached in a few minutes. 

The cherry picker wouldn't go back far enough because it hit the nose of my bumper so Josh had to manhandle my engine in place and thanks to him!  That's all K&N filtering right there.  I loved how the silver intake turned out and it still has the aluminum look but makes it so much easier to clean. 

A week after I finished putting the engine in, Dad, Mom and I had plans to go to the car show in Hershey, PA.  I had to work the leaks and bugs out in a matter of days and I got most of them dealt with and had a great trip up and back.  I ran the Monte with her new power package at 75-80 a few times that summer of 2005 and I ran 13.9's consistently every time I went.  The fastest was 13.83 which I was more than happy with and I got about 18mpg on the way to Ocean City that Fall so I had nothing to complain about for a big car with 2.73's.  I raced at Capitol one night this past summer and the best I could do was the last run at 14.002 when everything started cooling off.  I had one or two 14.4 second passes and the rest were lower but, I also had all the trim on it with the restrictive 2 1/4 tailpipes.  But still, very proud of the new 383 and a fun car to drive.