Is a 350x a small block??? My car was made at the changing point for Buick. 1980 the early ones got the 350x and the later ones got the350R or something, which is the Chevy sb350. There is always that confusing rating of big block and small when not one engine size is the same in GM. I would not call a 350X a small block but compared to a 455 rocket it is small but compared to a 350 Chevy its big. Not sure where I belong. I I say I have a BB but I might be wrong.
The 350 is a small block... the reason it looks bigger than the chebby is cause it is a wider degree block (90??) and the chevy's are a tighter angle (60?)o No: If you compare it to a small olds (350) or a pontiac 350 you'll see they are roughly the same size dimentionally. only exterior differences. Bottom line...350's are small blocks. HTH
not on the streets around here......some consider a 3.8 a big block.......hey man what kinda engine is that......is that like a 5.0 or something........i bet my 2.5 will keep up...........everyone says this once and only once. :laugh:
I was pretty sure all of the standard muslcecar era V-8's are 90 degrees. I would guess that the difference in size is more due to different deck heights and bore spacing (more the former i would think). Brien
yea all v8s are 90, I know cause I have a 2.8 firebird and that is a 60 degree engine. 2.8 3.1 3.4 3.8 are the only 60 degree engines. the rest are all 90 or somethin else.
The 3.8 rwd Buick motors are 90 degrees as well... The deck heights and also the way the heads are designed makes some motors wider...The bore spacing will alter the length of the motor...
I guess it depends on when and where you grew up. Around here if the block cubes did not begin with the number 4 (now 4 or 5) it was a small block. Thus in the 60s we had 413, 426 wedges 426 hemis, and later 440 s; 406 Fords and 427 variants in the early 60s and in the late 60s the 428: Pontiac 421s in 62 and later 428s; then the '62 409, 427 Chevy in 66 and later in 70 their 454s. Olds through others came on with the 455 Hurst in 68 and Buick with the 401 , the 400 and with the 455 in 70 . After 65 the GM directlve limiting the cubes in smaller bodies led to the 400 Olds and 400 Pontiac. Cad was doing their own thing with the 472 and 500. Lincoln at one point had a 462. So there were more engines 400 CID or better than you might think. And this is the reason we even called a 396 Chevy a small block which still makes Chevy owners hot.
I usually opt for the more accurate definition. Most car companies simply had two block designs. One was big, one was small. Typically larger ci used the bogger block. But Chevy 400 is a small block, where as the 396 is a big block, chysler had a big block that was 361cu. Pontiac choose to use one block for 326ci-455ci....
In the 60s most of the debate was about whether the 383 Mopar, 390 Ford, 389 Pontiac, and 396 chevs were close enough to 400 to get into the big block club. The 396 did it when in 71 or 72 when it really went to 402. PS: Yeah I know I left out some engines in the post above like the Buick and Olds 425 and the Buick 430, but I was trying to focus on the bigger cube engines found in the lighter bodies.
But the 396 used the same block as the 427 and 454...how can one be a big block and the other be a small block. I think the generally accepted reference is to which block design is used, not displacement.
We always used "big block" in the sense of size of the displacement because all other things being equal more diplacement meant more horsepower and torque hence more acceleration in a smaller bodied car. It was the main indicia of performance until supercharged engines changed the thinking but that was much later and not in the classic muscle car era of 64-72. Just to illustrate my point when we were just out of HS my retired partner (class'64) owned a Pontiac Lemans which in about 63-64 not only had a transaxle but the 326 cid engine referenced by a poster above as a "big block". If he had pulled his Lemans into the service station where the muscle car crowd then hung out which had a 426 car, 400 Olds L69 , 455 stage 1 etc and proclaimed he had a big block under the hood everybody would have then just howled with laugther because we all knew that compared to what we called big blocks listed in my post above his car could not get out of its own way. According to your definition he would he could have defended the honor of his ride by glibly saying "Just keep on laughing boys one of these days I am going to bore and stroke my big block 326 till it turns into a 455." We did not care whether the 326 could be bored or stroked into something quick, we were only interested in whether there was something powerful in the car right then. The term "muscle cars" was and is still synonamous with a high power to weight ratio and that "power" came from the "CID" and not the circumference of the engine.
All Buick V-8s were 90 degree blocks, the difference in appearance comes from the heads. On Chevys the heads angle up towards the intake valley, hence they look skinnier. On the Buick, Olds and Pontiacs, the heads pretty much continue the "90" degree angle, therefore giving the engine a much wider appearance. Mopar 383 and 440 actually DO continue the 90 degree angle, thats why they look sooooooooo wide in the engine bay. Mark
The 260, 307, 330, 350 and 403 olds are shorter versions of the 400, 425 and 455. They have the same bore spacing, but different deck heights (about 9.33 vs. 10.625 i think). You may be thinking of the 326-455 pontiacs, which all had the same bore spacing and deck height. Brien
I thought most Mopar 383 were a small blocks. There were high block versions in the early 60s that used the same intake etc. as the 426 wedge. For the most part the width of the intake manifold is an easy way to identify a small from a big block version of otherwise similiar motors.
Or what about the chevy 400 ci. Small-block VS. a chevy 396 ci. Big-block..... -Maybe its the bore that decides, wheather it's a small, or big block... I think chevy made a 348 ci. big block also which eventually became the 409 ci. and later the zl1 427 ci. (you can actually buy 454 chevy small-blocks!!) :Brow:
Mopar big blocks come in two types. B and RB... Big Block and Really big block, lol, actually the first is just big block, and RB is raised block. The 383 and 400 were both B motors, which are big blocks. The 426 and 440 were RB motors and had a little more deck height. The b and RB motors are the same design except for deck height, I think about a 1/2 inch difference, everything will swap between the two (except for intake manifolds.) Big Block vs Small block is about the Block itself. Has nothing to do with cubes. A big block does not need to mean big cubes. It is just that for the most part companies had 2 V8 designs, one was big and one was small.
