i have a spare LT1 laying around out of my wrecked 97z and i was thinking of making a project out of the motor to eventually drop it into my 96ss. i plan to still drive the car regularly so i dont want to make it into a drag car but would like to make it fast. i dont want to make too much power cause then comes a new tranny and rearend and i dont want to break the bank. i need some ideas to play around with. a tranny and rearend may come later but a good tranny 3k to 4k and a good rearend 2k to 3k thats between $5000 and $7000 and it would take me quite awhile to save that much to blow on my car. i really just want a mean street machine and i've read that just a 383 pushes arount 390-410hp and ive seen head and cam packages accompanied with all the goodies, injectors etc. can offer more.

 

IMO since you dont want to make a full out drag machine, i would just use the stock crank, get splayed main caps, eagle H rods, balance it, and put some decent pistons in it up it around 11:1, and buy one of AI's packages. The stock crank can handle some decent horse power, and if you use splayed main caps and forged or hypernuectic pistons it should be able to handle a decent shot of juice. The saves you the machine bill if it doesnt need to be bored, just honed.

 

Heads are the key to power, if you just add cubes without addressing the topend you will have a weak car, a very weak car. To the point where any decent heads and cam car will make more at the tires than yours would flywheel.

 

This guy is right . I have beat 383 cars in my LT4 . Its all about the combo. I know they would have beat me if they chose better heads or bigger cam .

 

how much power increase would the LT4 package give me?

 

When i searched this topic awhile back it had been covered a ton, basically the Lt4 top end isnt worth it vs one of lloyd elliots or AI's packages dollar for dollar. You can get really good results with ported factory heads.

 

Yep. Although I am very happy with my LT4 the Lloyd Elliott pkg makes more power. Dollar for Dollar. If I wasnt planning on going FI I would put LE3 heads and cam on a built 383.

 

ahhh ha now i see i'd looked at heads and cam packages on eportworks.com before i just didnt know that LE1,2,3 stood for Lloyd Elliot. those were the packages that i was talking about earlier vs the 383. those make awesome #'s for the $. now if i go with one of his packages how about my rearend and tranny? ive heard that stock rearends are notorious for throwing in the towel. and my tranny was rebuilt by the best guy around here he beefed up some of the internals i just dont know to what extent. I'd broken a sun shell and he said i wouldnt have to worry about breaking one of those again.

 

Tranny's (A4's) and 10-bolts are like porcupines playing with a baloon. Sometimes they last with a lot of mods and some abuse, sometimes they "go pop" on stock motors with drag radials. The tranny usually won't break though, it will start to really slip at high-rpm, and won't shift under full throttle.