Not Original, but not Restored either....What is it?

I'm trying to be nice to Tom lately.... p

 

people that live in glass houses.............

Rusty,i'd watch where you point your finger.By the way which class are you running in june,Fast or PS with a piece of wood under your gas pedal?

 

Hey Tom, I see the 'bird is one of the rare flywheel dustcover delete cars. I now understand how you're going to get it down under 3200lbs.

 

sorry to disapoint

That was installed last night, as well as some paint touch-up underneath
here and there that I didn't notice until I had it on a hoist last week. It's alot
easier to spend time looking at the underside of your car standing than it is
laying on a creeper ou: .

This exhaust sounds good :TU: I took it out for another little ride today :3gears:

 

Ha! I needed a good laugh! How fast is the "Bundymobile" going to run with the "340" under the hood? :moonu: We may have to move this discussion to the A$$ whipping topic! :spank:

 

With the 3.75" stroke, it should have a lot of grunt down low. Add to that combo cylinder heads and an intake that were designed for a 400+ cubic inch motor and you have excellant top end breathing for a "small block" :beer

What gear did you decide to go with?

 

Just out of curiosity, what's the bore on a Pontiac 350? It has 3/8 inch more stroke than an Olds 350 (3.375 vs 3.75). Olds 350 bore is 4.057 (standard like all W31's from the factory). Interesting combo with the big heads and intake from the bigger engine.

 

Stock bore is 3.875", mine is 3.905" (.030 over). Most people think that small bore engines are dogs but look at the newer LS1 engines from GM. A 2004 Corvette has a 3.90 bore with a 3.62" stroke (346 CID). Unlike the old 350 chevy 4.0" bore and 3.48" stroke. :Brow:

 

No arguments on small bore, small cube engines today and what they have been able to accomplish with the Jap technology. But these old behemoths seem to either like cubes (for torque) or short strokes (for high revving). Is the 350 HO a high revving engine? 6500+

Sure is a sweet package. Why didn't they sell more of them? or at least market them a little more?

Think I know the answer to this, but why didn't Pontiac campaign these more in NHRA/IHRA with the A car body? I know they did in the F bodies. Olds didn't have an F body, so did what they had to do with the W31.

The Olds small bore 400 engines didn't run strong because the small bore (also 3 7/8) shrouded the valves significantly. They were flat above 5000.

 

I kept the stock 3.55 gear, can alway's add more gear later if it need's it, but
I felt that I would leave the mild gear's in for street driving.
Just make's more sense to me to use the 3.55's for 2 races a year, instead of
beating it on the street with 3.90/4.10/4.30, etc. the rest of the year o No:

I ended up boring mine .060, and offset grinding the crank .012 to achieve
zero deck with the piston's I used.

 

STROKER BOY! STROKER BOY! What kind of Compression ratio? Zero deck????????? Aluminum rods? Roller cam? Damn! Look out Cajun!!!!!

 

A 350 HO has no problem going 6000+ RPM. :Brow: In fact when my Dad was testing the '68 engines back in '67 they ended up releasing the 60 psi (GTO) oil pump because of the increased RPM due to the 066 camshaft used in the "new" 350. With the 066 cam, lifter pump up speed was 6000+. The '68 engine was rated at 320 HP. In '69 the engine got more radical with larger valves, 2.11 intake/1.77 exhaust combined with even more camshaft (067, 068 or 744) for a "measly" 5 HP increase on the Firebird engine (325 HP) and a 10 hp increase on the Tempest engine (330 HP). At this point Pontiac was underrating the engines due to the close proximity of HP to the GTO engines.

350 HO's were not marketed strongly by Pontiac because the actual profit on the 350 HO cars was less than that of the GTO. Also Delorean was against "budget" super cars. When Delorean went to Chevrolet in 1970 Pontiac coincidentally released the GT-37.

Pontiac 350 HO's were not competive in NHRA because of the relatively high HP rating. Keep in mind that back in the day NHRA believed the OEM HP ratings. So for example you could run a '69 Firebird 400 rated at 330 HP or you could run a '69 Firebird 350 HO rated at 325 HP. Both cars probably would be in the same NHRA class, and who would want to give up 50 cubic inches???

 

I just ran across this thread, so I am steering it back from whence it came (at least for a second... ;>)

My car is a little like yours, except the engine compartment hasn't been done. All original interior, one repaint, and I don't know what to call it either. I really like F Bodies, (note my username). Yours is a beaut!

Frank

 

The Stroke is within legal NHRA limit's

The only reason for messing with the crank is due to a communication error
with the machine shop when they decked the block(incorrectly)
I had the engine bored, stuck the crank in it, and ran a piston/rod through all
4 corner's to check deck height, figured out how the deck needed to be cut
to both square it up and zero deck at the same time, and they dropped the
ball(machine shop) so when I got it back all cleaned up ready to assemble, I
then discovered the piston's were down in the hole .006, and at that time I
decided to offset grind the crank to correct the problem, as opposed to some
kind of pissing match with the machine shop over the decking, plus the engine
was cleaned with cam bearing's and freeze plug's installed, and I didn't want
to screw that up re-decking for another .006 ou:
Depending on whose compression calculator you use, my engine is right at
10.25, give or take a tenth of a point :Smarty:

 

Well, how much?

Thx

 

I'll gladly give up 50 cubic inches from a 350 W31 to a 68/69 400 even a W30. Maybe not in Pure Stock where you bog them and low end torque overrules horsepower, but with the way those cars were developed with slicks and headers like they ran in NHRA/IHRA.

442's were considerably overrated in 68/69 and W31's were underrated. Like Pontiac, pick the hp numer you want, follow the graph over to the RPM that puts you where you want.

Had forgotten about Delorean and his big block thing, good point. Kinda like Hurst was back then, too. They dropped out of the Rallye 350 program over that when Olds didn't even want the W31 option in them. Olds had drifted off into emissions development and outsourced all their new engine development to Batten and others about that time. Was good for Stempel's rise through the Mother General to the top.

 

I wonder what driveline was in this 'Bird ? 400 or 350HO ?? I know that Jack's '69 W-31 ran F-Stock in 1969. They moved to H-Stock in '70.

 

It's kind of hard to tell from that photo, but it looks like the bird has hood scoops to me, that would mean Firebird 400, probably a 330 HP model (non RAM AIR). Maybe RDL can give us his opinon??

 

to further push this to an Olds thread :grin: Casey, any idea what model 69 W-31 that is? F-85 or Cutlass S post?

Tom, car looks great as always. :TU: I'm not well versed on Firebirds, but when did they start using the traverse muffler, since that is what I was expecting to see under the car

 

'69 F85 W-31, 4-spd - 5.00 gear, rubber mat, radio delete. Fenders, hood, front bumper brackets, front bumper were all weighed before assembly. This particular car was partially built off-line, and had many "hand" assembled pieces on it. It was a VERY light '31, using all factory pieces ....... :Brow: