Some who have been around a while might remember my Superram GTA that had a 355 with TFS Twisted Wedge heads. Well last year I was on the interstate and lost oil pressure and by the time I noticed the problem the damage was done -- or so I thought.

With a little extra personal time I had a chance to pull the engine and disassemble it. Found 2 things. The oil pump pickup somehow got kicked up into the crank and the crank ripped it out of the pump and chewed it up slightly (sounds worse than what it was). No appearant damage to the crank. Pulled a couple of rod bearings and they were worn but none were spun. The last time the engine "ran" it was misfiring really bad with horrible lifter tick and was running at about 300rpm and then locked up. Actually, it didn't lock up I could turn the engine over by about 320 degrees but could not completely turn one revolution.

After pulling the cylinder head I found an iron pipe plug in Cyl #7 that was crushed...where did this come from? On its way into the cylinder it got stuck between the valve and seat and the piston kissed the valve and bent it slightly but the plug got wedged between the head and piston...slight damage (I would call marks) to the head and piston but no visible cracks. Upon inspection of the intake I found where the pipe plug had come from. Inside the Accel Superram upper plenum there are supposed to be two pipe plugs plugging various parts of the EGR passage. One was missing. Leave it to Accel to use an IRON plug in a cast ALUMINUM plenum. Anyway, before reusing the intake I removed the remaining iron plug and plugged both holes with ALUMINUM pipe plugs, loctited and staked in.

As for why I "upgraded" to the vortec: well I have had this engine for a little over 5 years now. I bought it for $100 because it came out of a 97 Chevy Van w/ 30,000mi that had fire damage. The engine itself only exhibited very slight fire damage to just the plug wires; the plastic intake, distributor, etc were not destroyed by the fire so I figured the engine was ok.

I had the heads machined for screw in studs and I ported and polished the exhaust ports, left the intakes alone. Had the heads shot-peened, cleaned, checked for straigtness, etc. Bolted the heads onto the block using ARP bolts. The block, crank, rods, pistons are 100%, but it did come factory with the powdered metal rods and that factory, bolt-on windage tray. Left the stock oil pump in there two. The only changes I made were installing the Comp Xtreme RPM hyd roller cam with 224/230 duration @ 0.050" and 0.502/0.510" lift. Also used hardened pushrods 0.100" longer than stock and my 1.5 roller rocker arms from the 355 TFS engine.

After waiting about 3 weeks, my Scoggin-Dickey Vortec TPI Baseplate manifold finally arrived on monday. I did have an issue using the Superram with this intake because the runners hit 2 of the intake bolts. I purchased 2 small conical headed bolts for increased clearance but still had to do some grinding on the runners. Got it all bolted up and finally had the chance to drive the car tonight.

I have previously done 2 TPI-vortec engines before this one. However, both were using the smaller GM LT4 HOTCAM and oem-style, long-runner TPI setups. Both of those engines ran very well and made a TON of torque. Both had hi-flow runners amoung other mods which allowed operation past 5500rpm without falling off too bad.

As for how mine runs? Well understand I have not driven the car in some time and it is about 32deg out but WOW. This thing runs AWESOME. I still have some idle issues to work out and I did have to remove some timing from the chip (previously set up for the TFS heads). This engine pulls hard from about 2800-6000rpm. With the TFS heads you could feel power starting to drop off after 5800rpm but not with these vortecs.

I highly recommend the Vortec setup for any 3rd gen. Definately worth it. I only wish I didn't have to pay $399 for the scoggin-dickey base TPI intake and instead would have liked to have gone SteathRam but the Superram works VERY WELL with this engine.

You can check out pics and more info here: http://dtcc.cz28.com/gta/

 

great lookin car, and good job w/ the project!!

 

i agree totally,people talked bad about Vortec heads back when i was putting them on my car when i changed it from TPI to carb'ed.

i LOVE them,they are probably the best or close to the best street head out there for the money. My car now pulls like a champ untill 5500 or so (my cam runs out at 5300,so i dont need to turn it any higher).

its great when you go from a 14 second car to a high 12 second car (guessing by the cars ive beaten/how bad ive beaten ) with less than a grand into it.

 

Indeed a flawless looking car in the pics! When I bought my first car it was a toss up between an 85 IROC and an 89 GTA...I got the IROC obviously but I kind of regret not checking out the GTA before deciding.

Vortec heads can't be put down by anyone after seeing them being used in stock form with cams smaller than .485" running well into the 9 second zone. Car Craft Cheap Street racing