first time project, no experience

[daveshapellSVT]

the most rewarding thing you can do is save and plan. The 305 is junk and will never give you enough power. Your options for a motor swap are endless, but the cheapest is gonna be either a 350 or a 400.. I bought my 350 for 500 bucks off my wifes step dad. It's rebuilt and bored so it's really a 355. it's a 4 bolt from a early 70's car. I ended up selling my old 350 TPI motor for 250 bucks. they are dirt cheap! i say save up 800 bucks and find your self a really nice low mile 350. An even better move would be to locate a 400 cause those will give you tons more torque. The tranny should hold the power from the 350 so i wouldn't worry about that much. maybe install a shift kit and/or higher stall converter. The rear end is going to be your next enemy. Any open differential( no posi) is gonna hurt you bad, and if you have tall gears(low gearing like 2:73) then your really fucked. You need posi traction and some shorter gears. shorter gears are gonna help you accelerate better out of the hole. So you need to save a little bit of cash and get that 305 out.. don't waste a dime on the 305!

[wrightz28]

Originally Posted by daveshapellSVT

The 305 is junk and will never give you enough power.

Oh really ?!?!

[daveshapellSVT]

pretty much. for my standards anyway.. Check out gmhighperformance magazine. that had a project called blue thunder. It was a thirdgen formula with the 305tpi and a t5 tranny. they did like every bolt on from heads and cam to rocker arms, exhaust and a chip.. The thing barley ran a 13.9 with all that done. Theres another project car i read about that was a camaro z28 with a 305 tbi. That thing was just pathetic, they did everything they could to that thing and it went from like a 18 sec 1/4 to like a 16.8 NA and then they sprayed and ran a high 13sec 1/4. Now i'm not saying someone else can't do better, but why waste all that money on making a 305 run 14's when you can buy a 350 and run what ever you want. Doesn't seem practical to spend more to go slower. I'm sure theres a few nasty 305 builds out there that are quick, but to me thats just pissing money away. I'm not just some magazine Quoter either i've seen how bad 305's suck in person..

[MrPbody]

Beauty is in the eye of the beer holder...

Just like my favorite engines, the traditional Pontiac V8s, 305s are victims of myth and superstition. We hear all the time, how "you can't make a Pontiac run. The only way to make that GTO fast is to use a Chevy motor..." Yah, right. We have a street-performance package for the Pontiac that makes an honest 600 horsepower, 650 lb. ft. of torque, idles in gear at 800 RPM with 14" of vacuum, gets 14 MPG at cruise, and moves a 3,800 lb. Firebird into the low 11s in street trim, all on 93 octane gas. Hard-pressed to find a BBC that can match that under 500 CID.

One of my best friends has an '87 IROC with a TPI 305 in it. Bored .030", it has the old "601" 305 HO heads on it (with significant port work, but still...), a Comp hydraulic roller, 5-speed, 3.42 rear. It makes 355 RWHP. That's at least 400 at the flywheel. It crusies at 1,800 RPM and makes 26 MPG. It goes low 13s with the street tires. Slicks would put it solidly in the 12s. But we don't read magazines, we build engines and cars. GM Performance is VERY limited, as they use, pretty much exclusively, GM parts. Comp has better cams. Dart has better heads. (for example, there are others)

There was a class in the '90s for sprint cars, called "E-Class". They were mandetory 305s. 3 3/4" bore, 3.48" stroke, 5.7" rod, NO EXCEPTIONS. A .020" overbore WAS approved, but frowned on. With high compression (12.5:1), they made well over 500 horsepower on methynol, mechanical injection, no "adders".

NEVER say "never"... The most common mistake made when building a 305 is using the wrong heads. If one uses an intake valve larger than 1.84" in diameter, power loss occurs, as the mixture rams straight into the cylinder wall. Perhaps that's why Chevrolet never put 1.94s in them.... HHHMMMM....

Not to be sarcastic, but ANY engine can be made to make good power for it's "size" (displacement). One must simply "tune" to the strong points and avoid the weak ones. 305 is a small block Chevy. There are no small block Chevys that CAN'T be made to perform as well or better than any other engine in their class. As much as I love the old Injun, this is the plain truth. Even the 400SB, which by most standards is a POS for durability, can be made to make more horsepower than the venerable 400 Pontiac. Of course, unless you use aftermarket block and heads, it won't "live" or flow. The block is the weakest part of a 400SB. Also, at street-power levels, the Chevy won't outperform the Pontiac. Torque is "king" for a street engine and the Pontiac is the torque "king" of the GM muscle engines (reality, not magazine numbers). With the funny bore/stroke ratio of 305, it makes a fine torquey engine. And it can be revved to the moon, just like 350 (same rod/stroke ratio), if all the necessary hardware is installed. It won't make the same high-end power 302 (Chevy) will make, but it will make a lot more low-end.

I'm with wrightz28. 305 has it's place in the pecking order...

Jim

[Morley]

I'm sorry, but a streetable 305 making over 400 hp at the crank is a big pill to swallow. Some years back Car Craft did a build of several 305's and the best they could get was 329 crank HP from a 334 stroker on pump gas. If you want to make HP you need displacement, plain and simple. For the money you'd dump into a 305 to get anywhere near 350 HP you could take a 350 well on its way to 500. ANYTHING you can do to a 305 to make more power can be done on a 350 and will almost double the results and usually for LESS money.
NASCAR is limited to 305 CID also, I believe. But if you think that is the 305 GM produces...wrong.
Running astronomical compresion isn't really an option, unless you have access to methonal and nitromethane..then again that isn't "streetable" either.

And whoever thinks a Poncho can't make power has obviously never heard of a 389 Tri-Power, 400 R/A IV, or a 455 SD.
The Pontiac engineers were able to get the SD to 600 HP using off the shelf GM parts that anyone could buy at their nearest Pontiac dealer...If that ain't power, I dunno what is.

[gorgepr]

besides the bore which other diference is between the 305 and the 350??? every thing else can be swaped from one to another

[Morley]

[quote=gorgepr]besides the bore which other diference is between the 305 and the 350??? every thing else can be swaped from one to another[/Q]
Heads. The 350 heads generally don't fit the 305 because the intake valves either hit the cylinder wall or are shrouded. And 305 heads on a 350 can cause too high compression and quench area problems. Also, the crank in the 305 is balanced differently, even though dimensionally it is identical to the 350's.

[daveshapellSVT]

Screw 305.. just go with a 350.

[MrPbody]

Perhaps you missed my statement about not reading magazines. We don't care. They are in existence for entertainment and selling advertising space. I invite you to Virginia Motorsports Park and we'll be happy to demonstrate the 400-plus HP 305. We don't race dynoes. We don't race flow benches. We don't race magazine articles. We race CARS. Just because a few "journalists" and their chosen buddies can't make 400 HP from a 305, doesn't mean it can't be done. It means THEY can't do it.

Glad to see you're aware of Pontiacs, but we still get the statement. We still see magazine jerks sticking craters in old GTOs and LeMans'. We still read where THEY can't get Pontiacs into the 10s in street trim. But it happens every week. You aren't foolish about Pontiacs. Don't be foolish about 305s... I've even seen 307s go into the 12s in '69 Camaros, and 305 may have better parameters than 307.

I don't disagree that 350 will make MORE at the same level, but 305 is hardly "junk".

Jim

[daveshapellSVT]

eh, i still think it's just easier to go get a 350 and be done with it. Unless theres something to be proven or a statment to be made, don't bother with the 305..

plus think about the situation at hand. this kid with the 78 camaro is still learning, we gotta help him in the best way possible and to me the easiest thing for him is gonna be motor swap. shouldn't take more then 1 day to do. thats not knowing what your doing of coarse. motor swap all day long!

p.s. a motor becomes junk when you dump hard cash and see minimal power gains. in my opinion..

[wrightz28]

Originally Posted by daveshapellSVT

eh, i still think it's just easier to go get a 350 and be done with it. Unless theres something to be proven or a statment to be made, don't bother with the 305..

plus think about the situation at hand. this kid with the 78 camaro is still learning, we gotta help him in the best way possible and to me the easiest thing for him is gonna be motor swap. shouldn't take more then 1 day to do. thats not knowing what your doing of coarse. motor swap all day long!

Okay, we get your opinion of the 305 for what the 4th time.

Unless you were born into a family bloodline of gearheads, were you able to do your first motor swap in 1 day, not knowing wnything about cars and no help? Please don't bother to type "yes"

Edit, again, he ahs no experience, and little funds, best to learn on what you have.

[daveshapellSVT]

just trying to sway him away from wasting his money and being disappointed.

Motor swap isn't hard, especially if your going from a 305 to a 350. I'm not saying i'm amazing with cars or anything either, but everyone has a buddy thats good with cars. I did my first motor swap on my 91 formula last spring with my wifes step dad and my brother in law. we weren't in any hurry and we did a lot of other stuff at the same time, but we had one motor out and the new one in with 5hrs time. toughest issue we had was lining up the motor with the tranny.

Make friends with a gear head and have him help you do the swap. it's easy.

[wrightz28]

Originally Posted by ewrock

I really need help. please consider the facts: I don't have much money to spend, I will be doing the laboring, and have no expirience in cars. Please let me know anything that is best for this situation, and consider all the facts that I mentioned,

Young kid wanting to learn and to impress his father. As a father, I would/am be much more impressed with my one of my sons who took the time to learn about mechanics and rebuild/improve, versus just throwing a new motor at it. Anybody can unbolt parts (hell my youngest was doing plugs at 5!), but to learn to know how each one plays into the entire picture of the motor is what developes knowledge.

[daveshapellSVT]

true, but in reality 3 or 4 yrs from now it's gonna be a slow 78 with a 305 in it. It's one of those things.."if i only knew then what i know now".. throw in the 350 and learn with that and save yrs of your life lol

[Morley]

Dosen't really matter what some pro engine builder can eek out of a 305, for his purposes it has to be streetable, those aren't.
The bottom line is; dollar for dollar you will always get more power from a 350 than a 305.
For what he'd need to spend to get some real power from his 305 he could put in a 350 and end up with the same power AND the potential for a whole lot more.