Alright, so my brother is giving me his black 89 camaro, it has a 350 in it. Serpentine belt needs replacing, distributor system does too. Also, a rod bearing spun.

My brother is going away for at most 4 years, but since I probably won't see him until he gets out except for a few times, I want to have the car ready for him to throw a supercharger or blower on it. I figure it'd be easier to just find a rebuilt 350, and a 6speed, throw that in there and then what?

I'm not really into cars so much but it's my brothers and he wants it when he gets out. I want it to be ready for him when he gets back, so what do you think I should do to it? Is there like a basic 'plan' that most people follow to get some easy horses out of their car? I figure I could either have the block rebuilt and bored out or just find another 350, throw some bgiger cams in, headers, exhaust, and whatever else . Any input?

 

Ok, 1st of all this isn't going to be a walk in the park but these are a few things I would do.

Get the crank turned at a machine shop and get the proper size bearings. Fix the dist. and get new belts and get a tune up. If you want more power do simple boltons and full exhaust. There is no need for a new engine and your brother can run a supercharger on the stock engine as long as he keeps the boost low. The six speed is a good upgrade but is expensive and time consuming. Search this site for information on what you would like to do and try some of the other forums like thirdgen.org. When you buy parts try to buy them from the sponsers of this site.

Just my .02

 

I suggest that before you get into this, you sit down and do a load of research first (I see you already have your terminology mixed up...chevy smallblocks have a CAM not camS.) You do realize that this is a very complicated process that requires a lot of knowledge and alot of money, especially for what you wanna do. But you are starting out at the right place by coming on this board and asking.

If you reaaaally want to put a blower on it in the future, I would suggest building up the bottom end to be stronger, since you have to get in there and change out those bearings anyway. This would give you a nice foundation to start with, and you'd be able to build up that HP worry free.

Once you have a solid working motor, I would start with basic bolt ons (Unless you have the money to build it up while it is out of the car...it would be alot easier.) Such as headerback exhaust, new intake runners, or new intake setup altogether. That could put you anywhere from 280-320ish hp depending on the route you take.

Then I would look into heads and a cam, but I won't get into that until you get to that step. Talk to us on here, ask around shops for prices for a bottom end rebuild, just start gathering all kinds of information.

Keep us posted

 

You sure about this I didn't know our stock engines could take FI for very long

 

If you keep the boost low(under 5#) you should have no worries. This does not take in willful flogging of the engine from stop light to stop light, which probably be the case though.

 

Huh.. I was not aware of that But like you said if someone s/c's their car GUARANTEE they will flog the **** outta it lol.