383 Engine Build and Dyno - '32 Roadster
The 350 that was in our 1932 Roadster was getting pretty tired. There was also a 383 leftover from our Project Chevelle, so we're going to take that 383 over to Zach Woods in our engine shop. He will breathe some new life into it and also throw in a few surprises. You don’t want to miss this!
Zach Woods runs the engine shop and he's going to put this engine together for us. To get the engine ready to go, we honed the cylinders to give the new rings something to seat into. We pin fit the new pistons and resized the rods to have the appropriate bearing clearance. Then, we balanced the old crank to the new rods and pistons. Finally, we simply washed it and it is ready to go!
Watch the timelapse as Zach assemblies, installs, torques and times it all. And lastly, drops on what we're all here for, the 4-71 blower.
After the engine was assembled, we hooked it up on the dyno. The valve covers were replaced because there weren’t any baffles on the other ones. We modified the carburetor to boost reference the power valve. This process included plugging the original power valve and vacuum source, drilling the hole in the side of the main body, and making a new port. Once all of that was done, we were ready to go.
The engine sounds happy pushing 520 horsepower and 515 ft. lbs of torque. We are really surprised and impressed with the 10 lbs of boost that the little blower makes.
Video Transcript
Joe: “The 350 that was in our ‘32 Roadster project was getting pretty tired. We also had a 383 left over from our Project Chevelle, so today we're going to take that 383 over to our engine shop and Zach Woods is going to breathe some new life into it and also throw in a few surprises. You're not going to want to miss it!”
Joe: "“We're here with Zach woods he runs the engine shop over here and he's going to put this together for us. You want to talk to us about what we did get this ready to go?”
Zach: “Yeah we took the block and we honed it give the new ring something to seed into, we pin fit the new pistons and resize the rods to have the appropriate bearing clearance and then we took the old crank and we balanced it to the new rods and pistons and we simply washed it and we're ready to go.”
Joe: “Alright we're here in the dyno cell we have our 383 moved in here. We changed the valve covers because we didn't have any baffles on the other one so we were worried about it pushing oil out. What else did we do?”
Zach: “We did some changes, some mods to the carburetor. We boost reference to the power valve which requires plug in the original power valve vacuum source drilling the hole in the side of the main body making a new port. All that said and done, think everything is ready to go let’s see what kind of power it makes.”
Joe: “Oh yeah! That sounded real happy. 520?”
Zach: “515 foot-pounds of torque at 45.”
Joe: “Do we need to rethink that torque converter?”
Zach: “I'm really surprised that makes 10 pounds of boost with that blower that impresses me a lot.”
