I am considering putting all my high school graduation money into rebuilding my motor and adding some junk to it (plus some extra cash that I have been saving). I will have about $4K at my disposal and was thinking about stroking the motor a bit. I was wondering what the drive of a 383 with a 6 speed is like. I have heard stories about mileage dropping tremendously and traffic being like hell on wheels...I don't care about the gas mileage, but I don't want driving it on the road to kill it.

So, you guys with stroker LT1s, how does your motor do in every day driving?

 

I would never stroke an engine unless it was already shot/blown up.

You can make them driveable, just depends on heads/cam/gears and TUNING.

 

There used to be a guy on this board that got extremely good mileage with his 383 M6. Well over 25 on the road. Merely stroking should not kill mileage. It is usually significant cam changes or poor tuning that kill mileage.

 

There is nothing inherent to using a stroker crank that makes any real difference in "driveability". Just adding the cubes doesn't change much. What will kill you fuel mileage and make it difficult to drive on the street is determined more by the cam selection than anything else, as Rob points out. And for any given cam duration, the extra cubes will actually make it less "noticable".

 

be cuatious of the cam you use...a cc306 is about the most i would go with for streetability. any more than that and it would be hell. even with a decent cam you shouldnt see any major drop in mileage. the mileage factor will come with a good tune, good sparlk, and the right injectors. i'd suggest upgrading to the ls1 stock 28.8 injectors and an inline feul pump...if you are really hardcore, go with 32's but they are overkill. the ls1 injectors will handle up to 500 hp easily with a 190 pump.

i've sent my cam specs, engine specs and my pcm off to madz28 to have him reprogram the pcm...you'll have to do the same with yours. my engine builder had someone that he used, but he was expensive, didnt allow changes, and took forever to get parts back with.

the guy i used to rebuild my block charged me 400, plus parts. he also had his son port my heads for another 400. he's about to retire so he cut me a deal on the heads. he's including new bigger valves, and i had the retainers and springs and stuff. i seemed kinda wishy washy when he said 700, so he talked me down to 4. any way, the backyard dogs are sometimes better than the larger shops. this guy in particular is in jersey, he's been building chevy 350s for about 40 years now, his son has been porting heads for about 20, they have a 4 car garrage with all the parts needed to do the work, and it takes him about a week to do the block and about a month for the heads. i had to bring him the block though, which was the hard part.

definitely look and ask around the local area, there has to be a chevy expert somewhere near. near i mean about 100mi radius

 

Thanks for the opinions guys, that is all I needed to know.

 

My 383 with the CC 306 gets about the same milage as my HC 350 and the drivability is almost identical unless you jump on it then it's a whole diferent ball game.