HOW TO: CHEAP SBC MODS THE $1000 QUESTION? WHAT MODS ARE WORTH THE MOST POWER AND WHAT DO THEY COST?

[Music] foreign [Music] ER and welcome the channel but you know you know the drill go to the corners like share subscribe ring the bell do all that stuff go to the corners and get all that done so you get notified when I do all this testing because today we're looking at the small block Chevy not only that we're looking at your basic power modifications to your bare bones small block Chevy we're talking about a two barrel equipped cast iron manifold smog heads tiny little camshaft that's our starting point but we're looking at this in two ways one how do we get more power from that and unlike all of my other videos how much does it cost that's right I'm gonna throw in some costs on some of these performance mods and we're gonna figure out well you're gonna figure out I got this much power it costs this much money is that a good deal okay guys let's Jump Right In and find out how much power we can get from your basic upgrade you know what I'm talking about a four barrel intake manifold headers you know a small camshaft even some ported stock heads and then we'll go even beyond that but also I wanted to do something that I don't normally do I'm going to try to include pricing on some of these things to give you an idea how much value is there okay we've got this much power for this much money and you guys just get to decide is that really worth it but our 350 started out as a rebuild so it was 30 over we put a forged flat top piston in it with valve release which would allow us later on to run lots of camshaft and and different cylinder heads on this combination but it it helped our compression a little bit here but we still started out with this uh rebuilt short block and we installed a set of 882 smog heads they were all stock we had a two barrel cast iron intake manifold and a two barrel 2G carburetor we also installed a very small mild stock replacement cam check from the local auto parts store all the listing said is 180 horsepower you know stock hydraulic flat tapping camshaft we put stock exhaust manifolds on it ran two inch exhaust out the back and put a distributor in this thing and what I wanted to do was basically start out at your lowest performance level two barrel smog era low compression small block Chevy and that's exactly what we did and then we'll show you you know what each one of the modifications does and hopefully how much it costs so we're going to start off with our 350 with a two barrel combination It produced 241 horsepower 359 foot-pounds of torque so a lot more torque than power we've kind of come to expect out on this two barrel kind of Base motor and the first thing we did was install a set of headers on it honestly I expected a lot more from long tube headers compared to stock exhaust manifolds but in this case on this two barrel combination we're looking at seven or eight horsepower the gains were fairly consistent all the way through the curve but possibly something else was holding this back but it's nice to get gains everywhere Peak power was up to 248 horsepower Peak torque was up to 366 foot pounds so the next upgrade pretty normal for a guy that has a two barrel small block and that's to put a four barrel on it in fact if you were going to get one of these from the wrecking yard or somewhere you probably would get a 350 that already has a four barrel on it but what we did was replace the cast iron two barrel intake manifold and and carburetor got rid of that replaced it with a another stock cast iron four barrel Quadrajet manifold and a four wheel Quadrajet ours came from the guys at Sean Murphy's but that's just one that West deck has sitting around ideally you would just get that from the wrecking yard with your intake manifold and it would be much much less expensive but as you can see the four barrel manifold offered a good power gain not not only a lot more Peak power but a lot more Peak torque Peak power check in at 278 horsepower and Peak torque checked in at 385 foot-pounds and it looks like the four barrel made every bit as much torque down below 2500 as the two barrel did a lot of guys will say oh but the two barrel you know get it makes more torque uh that's within a couple foot pounds it's probably a temperature difference there so when you and especially if you're running on just the primary circuitry it works pretty well on a four Barrel in fact for mileage and drivability and stuff it's really hard to beat a quadcia so we're making good power there but we wanted to do what everybody else would do if you have a cast iron Quadrajet manifold the one thing that you'd want to do is put some kind of Aluminum Intake Manifold on there so we put a wire in uh four barrel stealth intake manifold I think it was a stealth and it did it didn't depict a power it picked up Peak horsepower to 287 horsepower but as you can see it lost power all the way up to 4100 RPM and it definitely lost torque where the Quadrajet setup and we used the same carburetor on on the wine intake manifold but run with the qjet Factory cast iron intake manifold we made 385 foot-pounds but after installing the Y end it only made 372 foot-pounds so really of the two of those looking at the power and obviously the extra cost of the aluminum vintage manifold I'd pick the Q jet but there is an aluminum Factory aluminum version of the QJ intake manifold so if you're looking around a wrecking yards I think that that's where I would look so now let's take a look at some other modifications that we've made I don't want to get too busy here on our Dyno graphs I want to be able to differentiate those so let's jump in on some more mods and find out what works okay guys let's take a look at some even more modifications on our small block Chevy you remember we went from 241 horsepower to 300 or 286 horsepower 287 horsepower and Peak torque went from 359 up to 371 because we lost a little bit with the wind intake manifold but let's take a look at some other modifications and so now that we've done the induction system and the exhaust let's take a look at maybe some cylinder heads and what we did on this combination was we replaced the factory stock ascast 882 heads with a ported set of 882 heads and unfortunately I replaced the heads and a camshaft at the same time and I did this twice so if you're upset about it this first time know that it's coming again later on but we installed the ported 882 is only because of the available Dyno time that I had so we hit we did the heads and cam all at one time because we had torn the motor apart but we put ported versions from the guys at powerheads ported versions of the exact same 882 castings we did a pure energy 246 cam I'll go ahead and put the specs up here it's very very mild in fact I think it's one of the emissions legal Comp Cams but the gains that we got from the ported head we keep the intake manifold and carburetor the same the canes that we got from the ported head and cam upgrade 340 horsepower Peak torque was right up at 400 foot-pounds so again good gains and Peak horsepower and Peak torque but more importantly gains through the entire RPM range so now let's take a look at some more elaborate and and more expensive modifications after we did the power head upgrade what we did was upgrade the induction system you can see that that's this highest port point right here 419 horsepower and 421 foot-pounds of torque and what we did was replace the y-in intake manifold and Q jet with a different intake manifold and carburetor we installed an Edelbrock Performer RPM air gap kind of the go-to intake manifold for this power range and this RPM range in a small block Chevy and a demon a 650 Demon carburetor quite honestly we probably could have used the Quadrajet with uh equally well but we did replace that six the 650 we did install the 650 carburetor on this intake manifold and we got good gains like I said over 400 horsepower and a good bit over 400 foot-pounds and it worked out very well so you guys would have to decide um rather than put the wind intake manifold on maybe just upgrade right to the uh the Edelbrock RPM air gap manifold and then if you're thinking about a carburetor you could either keep keep the Q jet or step up to one the performance like Hollies or the other the newer Edelbrock that they have out now again that's all stuff up to you I think that they would work equally well so now let's take a look at our next modification and unfortunately like I said this will be our final one once again I upgraded the cylinder heads and camshaft all at one time but think about it this way if you if you had your combination and you were going to put like the ported head and the Pure Energy camshaft in that would be one way to go you're doing your own porting um you're maybe have have the mill do a valve job on them put a camshaft in and that's a good low Buck way to go if you're going this other route and going to put some sort of aftermarket head on we put Hollies on you could put airflow research or trick flow or any of the many heads that are available anything is going to be better than the factory head and anything is going to be better than a ported Factory head so you can install an aftermarket an aluminum Silver Head it's going to be more money you do get big gains and you would want to team that with a good carburetor in this case we went with a 268 extreme energy hydraulic flat tapping there would be no difference in price between the 260 the bigger 268 and the Pure Energy camshaft I don't think that there's any difference at Summit between those two cams yes I'll go ahead and put the numbers up here but if you were going to pick that if you were going to pick the the intake manifold then and camshaft and cylinder head upgrade you just pick the bigger versions all together so you'd have the RPM air gap you'd have some sort of performance aluminum head which is going to make more power because it flows more and it's going to be lighter weight so it's going to be better every weight and the camshaft would always cost the same so there we have it pricing performance you guys get to decide is it worth it or mature older make sure to like share subscribe ring the bell do all that stuff more of this kind of testing and others coming up okay guys as promised in the video here is a recap of all of the modifications we made to the small block Chevy the Power gains that were associated with those modifications and then if you take a look I've also included cost and then some notes on all the modifications so if you guys can take a look here you can see what the gains were see what the costs are and decide for yourself hey does this have bang for the buck check it out

Channel: Richard Holdener

Views: 53,175

Keywords: CHEAP SBC MODS, JUNKYARD 350 CHEVY, CHECY SMALL BLOCK, ALUMINUM HEADS, INTAKE, CARB, CAM

Id: uvixqIqDEEU

Length: 10min 51sec (651 seconds)

Published: Wed Apr 19 2023