Old 350 swaps in Gen 3 Camaros? Why? Gen 3 vs Gen 4?

In reply to pres589:

The 305 was a small bore motor, which is bad for performance to begin with, but 305 has intake valve shrouding issues, so they are doubly bad. Sure, they can be improved, but will never be really good. When you you consider how cheap and plentiful 350 were and are, and you consider its a direct bolt in replacement, it makes doing bolt ons on a 305 kind of silly.

I would like to know more about budget small block efi. I'm hearing that the tuned port setup was an air choker. Ive often been curious how the crossfire setup would run on a megasquirt with a performance tune. I always liked the tbi setup on the pickups just because they were simple and reliable.

Am I the only one who read old 350 as Olds(mobile) 350? Who the hell swaps that into a crammit?

adding power to gen1 sbc's require about 30 cents and some pocket lint. A half empty pack of gum will get you a killer cam. The Gen3-4-5 make tons MORE power though. It just costs more.

But if you are looking at roadcourse/autox/hpde if you can get to 300-400wheel off the gen1 sbc pretty easily I don't really see needing more at least for quite a while

Finding a good EFI manifold and intake system balanced towards high RPM for a Gen 1 SBC is considerably more expensive than a carbed intake. TPI motors have a lot of torque at 2000 RPM but are out of breath by 5000 - it would be better suited to a pickup truck, which is one thing they never put it in.

Here's an article where Car Craft built a 355" SBC with TPI and MegaSquirt 1 and Edelbrock heads. Power fell off fast after 5,000 RPM and they stopped spinning the motor at 5,200. Torque at 2,600 RPM is impressive. I am sure there was a cost hit but I continue to think this was the induction meant for light trucks at the time and not TBI.

TPI vs Carb

I'm on the 2nd Gen Camaro site a lot. It seems like the guys who want FI but don't want to go full gonzo into an LS swap are now using aftermarket kits like the Holley Sniper and FiTech. Haven't seen mention of anyone purposely 'upgrading' to a TBI or TPI set up in years.

Not sure why it really matters anyhow, a carb is fine for track & autocross use. Where FI shines is in daily driving, cold starting, fuel economy, etc.

In reply to pres589:

The perfect engine for a motorhome.

Well I have a 87 third gen Camaro with a 305HO TPI/5 speed with the following upgrades: headers/full 3" exhaust, cam, SLP intake runners. It is also a factory posi/disc 3:42 gear ratio car and it is really fun to drive. It does run out of steam at around 5600ish however.

Having said all that... if it wasn't a factory ordered convertible Iroc 5 speed I would drop the TPI/T5 for an LS/T56 swap in a minute.

If I was buying in the 3rd or 4th gen world again the only cars I would look at are the 98-02 Trans-am 6 speeds.

SEADave wrote: I know that on this site folks claim they can LS swap a car for three nickels with a ball of twine, but in the real world most completed street driveable LS swaps end up costing a lot more than the average 3rd gen is worth. Fuel, cooling, gauges, etc. all add up quick.

Came here to say this. GRM even did an article a few years ago on LS swaps and how they "realistically" cost closer to like 6k when done.

In reply to gearheadmb:

Depends on the situation. If the budget is tight, might make sense. I think the biggest issue with the 305 isn't the valve shrouding but how 305's never got a good cylinder head from the factory until the Vortec truck motors came along. And those still weren't as good as the 5.7 Vortecs. And they had that weirdo CPI intake and yadda yadda.

I could see a 305 El Camino making for an awesome project basis and I don't know that I'd just have to get 45 more cubic inches first for something like a $20xx Challenge effort.

If you are going to buy an intake, carb, headers, cam, and distributor for your SBC build you can buy them for the LSx motors instead for about $200 more. With even the 4.8l you will have more power and aluminum heads.

Even with a carb it's hard to justify an old SBC unless you have it sitting around already.

morecowbell wrote: Well I have a 87 third gen Camaro with a 305HO TPI/5 speed with the following upgrades: headers/full 3" exhaust, cam, SLP intake runners. It is also a factory posi/disc 3:42 gear ratio car and it is really fun to drive. It does run out of steam at around 5600ish however. Having said all that... if it wasn't a factory ordered convertible Iroc 5 speed I would drop the TPI/T5 for an LS/T56 swap in a minute. If I was buying in the 3rd or 4th gen world again the only cars I would look at are the 98-02 Trans-am 6 speeds.

Why the transam specifically?

I just realized something else, AC is really important to me even in an autox/track toy at this stage so that might sway things as well.

How does the GTO compare to the Camarobirds?

In reply to SEADave:

I've been following this discussion, wondering when the aftermarket throttle body units would come up.

I've got an 88 Silverado with a TB 350, and about 350k miles. Runs perfectly, burns about 1/2 quart between changes, but I'm always contemplating what I would swap in.

Needs to be simple, for me at least.

In reply to floatingdoc:

Simple is building the SBC in it already, I think an 88 would even have a roller cam block in it if you want to go that way.

Jaynen wrote:

morecowbell wrote: Well I have a 87 third gen Camaro with a 305HO TPI/5 speed with the following upgrades: headers/full 3" exhaust, cam, SLP intake runners. It is also a factory posi/disc 3:42 gear ratio car and it is really fun to drive. It does run out of steam at around 5600ish however. Having said all that... if it wasn't a factory ordered convertible Iroc 5 speed I would drop the TPI/T5 for an LS/T56 swap in a minute. If I was buying in the 3rd or 4th gen world again the only cars I would look at are the 98-02 Trans-am 6 speeds.

Why the transam specifically? I just realized something else, AC is really important to me even in an autox/track toy at this stage so that might sway things as well. How does the GTO compare to the Camarobirds?

I really dig the T/A's over the top styling and it already has an ls1 ready to mod.

The 4th gen Camaro bodystyle is just not attractive to me. I don't really know anything about the gto's. A first gen cts-v would also be pretty awesome for the $.

Some of GM's crate offerings are less than stellar as well.

We put a Ramjet 350 in a 1934 Ford a couple years back and I had an absolute nightmare tuning the fuel injection in it.

Our Snap-On Solus can't read it. We took it to a GM dealer, they can't handle it either. Finally found a local guy with the Mercury Marine software, he could read it but couldn't make any changes because the software is keyed to the ECU and we have to spend over a thousand dollars to buy the software.

It turns out that Mr. Badwrench thought using a Mercruiser injection system would be a great idea in a street driven car. When you start digging on the interwebs, the popular solution is to ditch the ECM and harness and swap in a GM LT1 computer and harness from a junker.

I was >< this close to stuffing in a proper distributor and tri-power manifold but the owner -really- wanted EFI.

I fond out Holley would sell me just the ECM and harness. I only had to adapt a couple weatherpak connectors and enter a custom curve to work with the Ramjet TPS and this thing has been running great.

Tuning it took about an hour one afternoon, customer is super pleased.

TL/DR: Sometimes EFI crate motors suck, had huge problems with one once.

there are some people that tune "old" efi systems like the TBI and TPI, but they are getting harder to find. The 'right' guy might be 500 miles away, if you find him at all. You need a more powerful later (93-95) computer to really have something to work with and it will need to be modified too. Moates does stuff like that. They can add flash memory and such. Megasquirt may be a better option in sime cases. Even now most of use can't tune a fuel system, but can find someone local to dial in a carb etc.