I blew my headgasket back in december and now the engine is out of the car. We checked out the bearings and they were just starting to show brass. I am obviously going to replace the bearings, but i also want make it fast and reliable while I have the engine out of the car. I am putting my budget at about $2500.
I'd like to do all motor and be low 12's high 11's. I was planning on ported heads, cam, stall converter, gears, headers, hollowing out my cat, new opti, and roller rockers. This is going to be a daily street driven car and I don't want it to be more race than street. Is there anything I'm missing? Is it even possible to go that fast for $2500? I can go more, but i want to take out a personal loan for no more than 6,000 and that is gonna pay off the car, parts, friend for helping me, and hopefully wheels. Any input is welcomed.

Brian

 

I wanted to do the same thing... I am now 6k into this car in mods... However, my motor is fully forged, my heads are ported and I have every other mod you can buy for our engine besides Nitrious. That price also includes the cost of the clutch that I bought. Depending on your goals will depend on your price. I decided I wanted to do it once and do it right. Do you still want to be emissions legal, daily driven, normal octane gas or higher? There is a lot of things you should think about before spending a lot of money on a motor. If I had to do it over again I would have prolly just rebuilt the motor with forged internals and slapped on a 150 shot.

 

I want it to be a daily driver, and I also only want to do it once. So far it was a PITA to get everything out. My friend and I are going to rebuild the whole engine, and I'm not sure if i should replace the rods and pistons or not. Obviously that is going to get the price up higher. The main thing is it has to be a reliable street setup because this will be pretty much my only car until winter rolls around. I've done some research because I wanted to just do a little motor work and then a good healthy shot of nitrous, but I've seen people say they go through trannys like underwear. My tranny will have to be redone yet again, but i want it to last as long as possible. Same thing with my rear end. IT has about 115k on it and I've done a lot of burnouts, so idk if that is going to hold up well. I talk to Llyod Elliot awhile ago and was interested in his le1 package. Now I might think le2, but i don't want my car idling like crap and a pain to drive in traffic. If worse comes to worse I can always do nitrous later to go faster at the track, but I want a good motor that will run low 12's high 11's. If I have to spend $3500 to do it right then thats what I'll spend, but I don't want to go crazy. I just want to play it safe, or as safe as you can while doing higher hp motors . Any things I should pay special attention to or do before anythig else?

 

I went with summitracing's forged srp piston rebuild kit for around 500. I then went with Eagle 5.7" I beam rods that fit the pistons that summit sells. I then just had my crank turned .010 in order to save some cash. From what I have read and heard our cranks are really strong, so unless you plan on doing more than 400RWHP then I wouldnt worry about getting a forged crank.

I then went with lloyds LE2 heads and a GM847 Cam. I have all the misc boltons like throttle body, headers, electric water pump, lt4 knock module, etc etc..

However, if you just want to obtain high 11's low 12's and not dump a whole bunch of money into a N/A HP motor then I would suggest going with better tires, and good suspension mods. If you get a decent cam you dont really need head work to obtain low 12's if you can drive. I however wanted to make sure that I can hit 12's all day long even with a crappy 60' and thats why I built a HP monster. I wanted to have more power so I didnt have to kill my rearend with really good 60's because the HP would get me where I wanted until I could afford a new rear end.

However you will have to get really good 60' times, somewhere around 1.6 or so to obtain low 12's high 11's without head work.

Look at the link in my sig and click on the specifications link. That will guvce ya an idea of what I did to my car.

 

How much were the rods? Those are forged rods correct? It also seems like you were planning on 400rwhp+ so why not get a forged crank? I'm sure they are expensive though. I also want to save my rear from hard launches like 1.6 60', so I'd like to be about 390-410 rwhp. Just not sure if i can get away with that for $3500 for parts and headwork. How mcuh does have the bottom end assembled normally run?

 

My bottom end assembled costed me 900 bucks exactly.
(Engine Balanced $300
Engine Assembled $300
Engine Bored .030 over, Honed, Madnafluxed, Hot Tanked $300)

My LE2 heads were 1500 with rockers, studs, lifters, pushrods, and water pump.

My engine parts were roughly 1000.

So thats almost 3500 right there.
You still need atleast another 1000 for mods.

I have a excel spreadsheet of everything broken down if you are interested. Just shop for the best deals and take advantage of the group buys.

My machinest told me that you could get away without paying to get your motor balanced because the kit was almost perfectly balanced when he did it. He said it was probobly because he took .010 off the crank.

So just make sure you know what your getting into before you start. The worst thing I have experienced is the down time since I have had my motor out of my car. It's been 6 months since its been down, and its still not back together yet.

 

Crank will be fine and your rods too if they aren't the powder rods will be OK with new ARP bolt's and resized.Get a descent head port (250-260CFM) and a mild 218/224 cam (Crower) that doesn't lope bad use the stock lifters and recommended springs and retainer's, a 52MM throttle body,headers,PCM Forless mail tune. Of course new rings,brgs, cam brgs too(Clevite H series) and forged pistons (Probe) Let your shop check the size's on EVERYTHING,and boil out the block.

 

While I was pricing parts today at work from jegs and summit, it looks like I should be willing to spend around $4300 for a rebuild kit, 7.2 hardened pushrods, 58mm throttle body, 3.73 gears and installtion kit, B&M holeshot 3000 converter, crane cams roller rockers, accel 30 lb/hr injectors, lt4 kn, msd opti, lunati timing set, and $530 for forged rebuild kit, and a set of LE1 heads and cam. I bought a set of coated hooker supercomps on ebay today, but they are shorties. Are the stock rods in my 94 lt1 going to be able to do this and maybe a 100 shot down the road if i get them resized and use arp fasteners? I've read they are good to about 450 hp, but when I was looking in the parts catalogs I saw the forged ones are good to 500 hp. Is there anyhting I might be able to get away from, or do you think they might cut me a deal if I order everything at once? Also, I bought a gasket kit from autozone (felpro) and was wondering if I should use the exhaust manifold gaskets that come with the kit or should I get better ones seeing as how I am going with headers?

 

Do a lot of research, I had originally thought i might get a holeshot convertor, but i saw quite a few horror stories about them, also thought about a 58mm TB, but then found out it really isn't necessary at all. Might want to get the exact price for what the machine work on your block is going to cost also before you go much further. Remember you can build a 355 (or whatever you want) put a cam in and heads all at once, but you can also just get the shortblock finished put in a new cam, and throw your stock heads back on just so you can drive it and save up more money to get good heads, just options, i have been thinking of doing the same thing and have been researching for quite some time, and only just started buying things.

 

My main think is that I only want to do it once. So if I get bored with the power and want to go bigger I will probably give it some juice. I just want to make sure it can hold a 100 shot or so. I'm not stroking the motor, just looking at the basic rebuild but with a better top end. I just figured might as well make it a fresh motor before I start puttin all this money in it and have something stupid happen where i have to take the heads off again. Its been down for too long and I just want it back together so I can drive it. I might just buy some bearings and call it good. I'm also trying to decide if I am going to have the shortblock assembled by a local shop or if my friend heping me and I are going to tackle it. He has a lot more motor experience than I do, and if he has questions, he has the right contacts. All these parts are what Llyod suggested I should get to compliment the package because I told him what I want to hit as far as timeslips. He didn't suggest certain brands, these are mainly parts I found through parts catalogs. If someone has opinions on things to get or stay away from I'd sure like to hear them now lol.

 

Ya won't get any deals from Summit.
Your rods will be fine with the ARP's and resize if they are not the powder rods.
Set up sounds good.

 

You want low 12's or high 11's. You could simply replace your bearings, port your heads, and throw on a cc305 cam. I've seen headed cc305 lt1's go low 11's.

If you want to go even deeper into it, get some 6" rods so you can spin it higher, more safely.

Anyhow, if you simply get some ported heads ($1300), a cc305 ($200), some hooker longtubes ($300), 30# svo injectors ($200), and the bearings you need and some impala ss head gaskets, that will bump your compression up and put you right about $2500.

The cc305 is a very streetable cam. I had one for a few months and I could barely tell a difference from stock until I got on it.

Keep in mind since you are new to modding, that your stock 10-bolt rear end will not hold up to much power. If you don't know what I'm talking about, then you need to do a search on the "10-bolt" in the drivetrain section. I will go ahead and tell you to get a girdle cover since I know you probably cannot afford a 12-bolt ($2000).

 

Yeah I knew that the factory 10 bolt isn't the strongest. The one thing I have going for me there is that I have an auto. Maybe next summer or winter I will get a 12 bolt. Where did you find injectors for that cheap? I've been looking for the past few days and couldn't find any under $250. My friend helping me says he can get some stuff cheaper from friends of his and what not, so I'm hoping he can maybe take off around $500. But I never thought of the girdle. Thanks for that one .

 

What thickness is that impala headgasket? I am looking for them online and they have three thicknesses. My guess would be the thinnest correct? That is .028 inches.

 

I am actually not quite sure what the thickness is. Its been a few weeks since I finished everything. I'll have to get the specs from my other computer.

All I know is that the ss gaskets brought my quench down to .037

As for the injectors... You don't really need 30# injectors. You can settle for 24# svo's. They will pump @ 26.5#. That would be plenty enough for a lightly modded lt1. Just keep looking around until you find a good deal. Try a search in the for sale section, look on ebay, etc.