I recently bought what i thought was a 350 out of a 70's model vette every thing looked legite it was rebuilt so i bought it 500 bucks i put it in my car 79 z28 and it moves but just didnt seem like it it had the 325 horse i was explaned to that it had.well i was fooling around one day and decided to run the numbers on the block so i did it is a 283 2 bolt main out of a 66-?? year corvette its a vette motor but not a 350 has corvette valve covers everything 202 fueler heads.Any ways i wondering if thier is anything i can do to this 283 or should i scrap it and buy a 350 from the bone yard and have it gone over.and also should i use the heads off the 283 on a 350 or is that a bad idea just looking for some tire shredding torque thats all thanks guys

 

I'm not the most knowledgible Vette-wise, but I've been around 283's. I was under the impression the smallest engine you could get in a Vette after 1963 was a 327 - but I may be mistaken. I'm fairly certain you couldn't get a 283 in a '66 Vette, though.

Post the casting #. In general, a 283 is a very poor place to start building a performance engine. Put the crank (which is steel, by the way) into a '67-earlier 327 block, and you'll have a 302. Of course, if you keep the crank that came in the 327 block, you'll have a 327...

 

3756519 thats the casting number it is a 58-62 my bad the last year of the 283 in the vette was in 61 also

 

You should be able to get something out of it for someone trying to put back together a 58-62 vehicle. I'd think Hemmings would be the best place to go.

Lesson learned to check the numbers before the cash changes hands.

 

Can you have 2.02" valves in a 283?

 

It sounds like that engine is worth a heck of a lot more than an average 350. Those little 283 vette motors would wind forever.

Run the numbers on the block and heads. It's probably worth more than you think.

 

Yeah it will wind forever i like to take up to about 5 grand in 2nd gear drop it into first and it will just smoke the tires till i shift again at 7500 rpm then it will smoke them into 3rd it's bad for the car but thats what i built it for

 

My current 305 winds higher than any of the 283s I had. The best the factory got out of a 283 was around 290 horse, and that was back when they used flywheel gross and were still rather generous in their ratings. I'm putting 250 horse to the rear wheels with this emissions-legal and daily-driven 305.

The 283 had a larger bore than the 305 does. You can use 2.02 valves, but the benefit over 1.94's is a diminishing return.

Giving up displacement is just silly. Put the same $'s in a 350 and a 283, and there is no way the 283 is going to make more power. With what is available for 350's these days, you probably aren't going to get the 283 to wind higher than the 350 for the same money, even.

 

I agree with the recommendation of yanking the 283 and selling it to some guy who's into the "numbers-matching concourse restoration" thing. Then put the rest of that stuff back on a cheap 350 short block and have fun beating the tar out of it (and going faster than the 283 ever would). You might be able to get out of this for even money, maybe even make some. Depends if it's a rare 283 block that somebody would pay big bucks for. It's worth whatever 2 people say it's worth at any given time.

 

That was kind of what I was getting at. Someone with and old vette that had its 283 swapped out for a newer 350 would likely pay $$$$ for a "correct" long block. You may end up making money on the deal. I've seen some of the vintage 283/327 long blocks sell for well over a $1000, depending on what they came out of and when they were built.

 

I have a 350 4 bolt main sitting on my stand it is missing the heads the motor came out of a 79 chevy pickup of some sort.anyway what do you guys think about putting those heads from the 283 on the 350 i also put a holley duel plane street dominater aluminum intake on it i would also like to swap out along with the edelbrock 600 man choke man sec would this be a good combo with the headers and a stock cam on the 350.the reason why i wanna do this is becouse i just cant quite hang with a strong 5.0 almost but not quite i wanna be able smoke em lol ( all show not quit enough go) i also would like to mention that this car is for sale 71,000 original miles on the body

 

I think that would be an excellent combination for not a lot of money. Keep your eye on the compression ratio. You're going to be shoving a lot more displacement into those cylinder heads, which raises compression. If the heads you have now have 64cc chambers then flattop pistons in the 350 will yield around 9.7:1 compression, give or take. Dished pistons would be lower, domed pistons higher. You probably want to keep compression below ~10:1 on pump premium fuel.

You can check the head castings and find out their original chamber volume here: mortec.com