I was talking with a mechanic friend of mine and suggested something somewhat intriguing. He was telling me that a local custom machinist has a 406ci shortblock (400 bored over) for sale. 8:1 compression, forged/billet parts, etc. etc. for a really good price. This machinst thinks that it is entirely possible to bolt my LT1 topend onto it and get the added inches for my setup. I, of course, am very skeptical. I was wondering why I couldn't do this without rediculous amounts of additional cost. This guy is an extremely good machinist, and he says he can convert my heads from reverse cooling to normal, but what other problems am I going to run into? Like I said, any machining isn't much of a problem, but what additional things should I watch out for when analyzing the feasability of this?

 

i just posted about this in TECH, ive herd from a few sources lt1 heads will bolt right up, and the colant passages are the same. there are 2 small 1/4" round holes on the bottom of the heads between the the CC's that need to be filled. other then that, you would need a SBC electric waterpump and alt.,PS,A/C etc if you want. get one of those fancy belt drice systems i keep seeing in popular hotrodding.

 

Now how would I keep this fuel injected without going to an aftermarket computer?

 

you have to run aftermarket dfi with the gen 1 block. the stock computer has to get both hi/lo res pulses from the opti to work.
there is no way to drive/mount the opti on a gen 1 sbc.

plus there are much better heads to use on a gen 1 block then dealing with converting lt1 stock parts over.