Re: help my 283

Posted by Hal (WA) on July 29, 2008 at 22:51:39 from (208.81.157.90):

In Reply to: help my 283 posted by kurtis on July 29, 2008 at 15:51:35:

It depends on what you are going to do with it. Back in the 60's Chevy built the Z28 high performance 302, which was more or less a 327 block with a 283 crank, 2.02/1.60 heads, high compression ratio, a big 4 barrel carb on a high rise aluminum manifold, a fairly decent exhaust system and a fairly radical solid lifter camshaft. And lots of people built 301's by boring 283's out to 4".

The 302 Z28 worked well as a race car in the Trans-Am series of the time. They also were a good class drag race car and Chevy sold quite a few of them to young men who wanted a factory hot rod. But they were not always that fun to drive, since the engine really needed to be turning pretty fast to make any real power. They would wind very high, but were not that hot around town. I don't think they would sell that engine with an automatic transmission, only 4 speeds. Chevy built the 302 to fit the rules of the Trans-Am series, which limited the engine size to 5 liters. Using the 3" stroke 283 crank and the 4" bore 327 block happened to produce an engine that was just under the 5 liter limit. That way it didn't cost Chevy that much to build something that could be competitive.

The 301's I was around did not have the super high performance heads, but rather the 283 "power pack" heads. They also usually had camshafts that worked great on the street. Those engines were in everything from 55 Bel-Airs to Chevy II's and seemed to work OK with stick or automatic transmissions. The combinations went real good, but remember that was in the days when 100 octane gas was common and you could get away with high compression ratios.

Since this is a truck forum, I assume you are planning to put the 283 in a truck. I have seen 283's in lots of pickups and a bunch of much larger trucks. But the truck 283's had low compression ratios, 2 barrel carbs and very mild camshafts. The vehicles were also geared fairly low, since the 283 didn't have that much more torque than the 235 6 cylinder.

I think that if I was going to build a 283 for a pickup that I planned to use as a daily driver, I would build it very mild, with a max of 9.0/1 compression ratio, a hydraulic camshaft that is supposed to make lots of torque, a small 4 barrel, a HEI ignition, headers that fit the vehicle and a free flowing exhaust system. I would not use the 2.02 heads, but rather would get some from a 283 or 327. Or I would check out the possibility of using late model Vortec heads--they are supposed to be pretty good.

The large port 2.02 heads worked well on high performance 327's and 350's. But they might have the same problems with poor low rpm performance on your 283 as the Z28 did, for the same reason: not enough mixture velocity in the ports.

Or I would just put in a 350. And old adage states: NOTHING SUBSTITUTES FOR CUBIC INCHES. There are millions of 350's out there, and not that many 283's. Good luck, and don't build something that is so radical that it ends up just sitting all the time. The combination has to work together.

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