Well I celebrated my 16th birthday by pulling a motor out of a wrecked truck. The motor run, we started it up just to make sure. It has an edlebrach carborator, aluminum intake, later model heads, msd wires and could possibly have a big cam in there. I am going to clean it up this week and get it looking good, Any thoughts on dress up kits / valve covers and air cleaners, or any good performance stuff I should do while the motor is sitting out of the car? I am on a limited budget but I wanna do it half way right at least for right now. Any advice?
Building a sbc 350
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Congrats on your 350. As far as a dress up for the 350, check on Ebay, many items for this, and some pretty reasonable priced. I don't know how far into the tear down you want to go? This is a good time for a good degreasing, maybe a little touch up painting, new plugs, ect. Good Luck
2000.malibu.ls said:
That really depends on what your taste is. I am not a huge fan of chrome, so I just use paint as my dressup kit. Some people like to chrome everything they can on their engine. I like to keep it all lookin some what stock, when people see it they think I have a slow stock piece of crap. Then I just humiliate them when I race their car.
as far as like the 40$ full dress up kit goes, is it worth the money? does it rust? I plan to paint the engine one color as it was a mud truck it came out of and it has several different colors on the block. It needs a good de-greasing. Being its a buick car, is it wrong to put chevy valve covers on there, or just a no-logo deal? I kinda want a shiney engine cause Its gunna be a long while before its a shiney car lol. I also need a new fan blade, I was thinking about doing the motor in like a red chrome and blue theme using anodized red and blue with stainless braided wire wraps and the shiney header wrap. What do you have done to your engines? pictures?
In Florida, cheap chrome will be rusty inside 2-3 months. It will also leak because the parts are made of much thinner steel than the OEM stuff. Polished aluminum is a bit better, but requires constant attention. My advice is to get a high quality gasket set, a new timing chain, and some spray paint and be done with it. My engine has no chrome and is all black because I have no desire to deal with detailing. I do have a set of polished aluminum Taiwanese valve covers though if you are interested. New in box, and they're yours for $60. You just gotta come down to New Port Richey to get em.
how much money have you put into that markcp? cause That looks really good. haha cutlass Idk about that its still a 3-5 hour drive lol what do they look like? That sounds kinda expensive though. I Saw some Moroso's in a magazine that have a "fiber" design,in black or anodized blue or anodized red. I havent been able to find em online yet so idk about pricing. msd has an ignition kit now for 150$ so Im gunna look into that.
2000 malibu, I have a box of receipts from the car. I just watched Ebay and when I had some extra money, I would look a bit harder. I had bought a MSD ignition box, fried it, had it replaced and sold it for $120.00 new in the box. I was told, unless doing some strip racing, it is not worth the prolems you can have with them? I went with the cast aluminum valve covers, a bit stronger than the stamped steel, much tighter fitting. Everyone has an opinion, you have to make the car yours. I asked for advice, some I took, others I went my own way. Good Luck and keep us posted..
The MSD HEI distributor should be fine. I am planning to run one on my car when I get around to messing with the mechanicals again. My 1977 GM HEI has seen better days and I am tired of messing with 31 year old crap. The timing is erratic at best, and I figure it is a worn out advance mechanism. Plus, the MSD allows you to vary the amount of mechanical advance and vacuum advance, which is valuable in setting up a non-stock engine for good driveability. However, I too would avoid their ignition boxes as I have had trouble with the one in my AMC Spirit, and know of a few other people who have had trouble with theirs as well. They do not pot their boxes, so the circuits are very susceptible to moisture shorting them out. For what they charge, the should be potted IMHO. Plus, the pills burn out over time, and the car won't run if they do.
85 Cutlass Brougham said:
I went with a new MSD Streetfighter HEI since I was replacing everything else. I already purchased the ignition box, when I heard the bad stories behind them. I thought as long as I had the burnt out one replaced, now was the time to eat my losses and sell that new in box 6A. Happy I did.
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