SammyChevelleTypeS3
$50 site donor 2023
That is a good one. I am gonna guess 1973?
Chevrolet Big Block Trivia or : Where were they hiding them Horses!?
- Thread starter SammyChevelleTypeS3
- Start date
My step dad was shopping for a new chevelle in 1977, I tried to convince him to get the 350 but he settled for the 305.
This ended up being my first car in 1985. Except for the cam going bad early it was a reliable car. GM paid for the cam, I think there was a recall for it.
SammyChevelleTypeS3
$50 site donor 2023
Yeah, those late 70s years were a tough one on everyone in the auto industry and for customers. From all the new restrictions we also had to deal with OPEC and the oil embargo - long lines at the fuel pumps etc.... What eventually got me to stop buying new vehicles from The General was that I looked back and realized , every single new Chevy I had bought ended up needing transmission work before I even got to 40,000 - 50,000 miles. Then we were still paying for the wife's first new car. What Chevy techs at the time laughingly called their "throw away cars" the Chevy Monza with some of the first aluminum block 4cyl engines. Of course it exploded on us one day around 38,000mi just out of warranty! So , young couple with new baby and we were paying car notes on a blown up engine car. Brother in law and I ended up putting a 4cly engine in it from a welding machine he had just so I could use it to get to work only 4-5 mi from the house and let the wife take my new Chevelle for her 60mi a day round trip work drives. A good thing did come out it when I scored a 1972 Chevy Malibu I had been having my eyes on down the street from YES.... A little old lady the wife knew! LoL A little old ladies grocery getter.
SammyChevelleTypeS3
$50 site donor 2023
probably unless they still had some real 396cui in the factories at the time they put yours together
1969 only year you could get a low compression 396 with a 2 bbl carb. 265 hp and only available in full size cars. I have seen 2 in my life and both were in a station wagon .
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SammyChevelleTypeS3
$50 site donor 2023
Striker!? That is one I never caught wind of but makes for a good nickname based on what they were doing. As an old Chevy die hard I certainly was not one of those "my brand or the highway" guys. I loved all brands from the big block Mopar monsters to the Ford/Mercury FE 427/428/429s to the times when AMC got themselves into road racing. I even got a kick out of when the Alabama Staties went with the AMC Javelins (401cui) ram air to go after speeders around 1972. Some folks do not realize even Buick put out some street/strip sweepers that could even run with and beat some fast cars when Buick offered the 455cui Stage1 and Stage2 monsters in the 70s era GranSports and rare GTXs. Good thing I was too young to own some of those. They likely would have had to scrape me off some highway then because I did not yet have the sense to not SPEED on regular roads.
SammyChevelleTypeS3
$50 site donor 2023
Appreciate the folks that jumped in here because I suspected there has to be some good old Chevy knowledge among this BITOG crowd.
I am a big fan of the old Mopar days as well. My dream car of all time would be a factory E5Blue 70s era Road Runner or GTX (top painted white not vinyl) with one of their scary fast 6pack Air Grabber engines! zooooooom
I am a big fan of the old Mopar days as well. My dream car of all time would be a factory E5Blue 70s era Road Runner or GTX (top painted white not vinyl) with one of their scary fast 6pack Air Grabber engines! zooooooom
Here is a torque and horsepower graph of a 1970 396 ( 402) in gross HP.
Obligatory photo of a 402.
SammyChevelleTypeS3
$50 site donor 2023
Yep! You know one of the big clues if there was no displacement stickers on the air cleaner is to look at the valve covers. The original SS396 engines mostly arrived from the factory with those sweet looking shiny silver looking valve covers on them. I can recall some of the early big blocks came with some type of warning decal. Think it said something like "Caution-use of low octane fuel can result in engine damage." Maybe one of our BITOG old Chevy techs can remember what it said. My memory (used to be almost photographic) is now slipping a bit on me.
SammyChevelleTypeS3
$50 site donor 2023
I bet that machine with a set of wings could lift off with the 375hp 396 in that lighter body Chevy. Must have been tough to pass up gas pumps too!
It had a 16 gallon gas tank, and got about 8 MPG in the city. Manual steering, 4-speed, power disk brakes, (in the front only). AM radio with no pushbuttons, and rubber flooring that was molded to look like carpeting.I bet that machine with a set of wings could lift off with the 375hp 396 in that lighter body Chevy. Must have been tough to pass up gas pumps too!
Most people will get this one wrong because they forget about the 366 & 427 tall deck commercial truck engines.
The only thing worth saving from a 366 core is the forged 3.76" crank. The rest makes a good boat anchor.
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Here is a company that has a stock of used 402 blocks and re manufactures them.
SammyChevelleTypeS3
$50 site donor 2023
Yeah. The 366 is certainly one I do not even recall. I remember there was a place in NY that is likely still in business run by the sons or others called Motion Industries by Joel Rossen who did stuff like Don Yenko and had a deal with General Motors thru dealerships to take brand new (customer ordered first) Camaros or Chevelles and Corvettes and they would take the new cars into their shops. Remove the brand new engines to replace with the 427cui or larger available engines that GM would not sell thru dealerships at the time. Those are some highly sought after "day 2" cars called Yenko SuperCars or MotionChevys. They seem to be worth their weight in gold these days The funny?sad? thing is that now a days with all the newer / modern high horsepower fuel injected engines there are probably "tuned" Toyotas and Hondas that could likely out run some of the American muscle machine cars from the 60s and 70s. I have no doubt many of the Mopars they been putting out since about 2010 can eat up any older cars they meet on the roads or tracks.
Those fat looking valve covers are awesome. There’s no mistaking it’s a big block.Yep! You know one of the big clues if there was no displacement stickers on the air cleaner is to look at the valve covers. The original SS396 engines mostly arrived from the factory with those sweet looking shiny silver looking valve covers on them. I can recall some of the early big blocks came with some type of warning decal. Think it said something like "Caution-use of low octane fuel can result in engine damage." Maybe one of our BITOG old Chevy techs can remember what it said. My memory (used to be almost photographic) is now slipping a bit on me.
I considered buying some 24' GMC Box trucks powered by the 366 or 427 gas, tall-deck blocks, for a former business. A test drive proved them to be lacking at full GVW of 26k (to keep them legal for non-CDL employees) At the time, buying Internationals with the DT466, was a better option. More torque, and better fuel economy. Diesel fuel was also cheaper than Gasoline at the time.
SammyChevelleTypeS3
$50 site donor 2023
LOL ..... There is no mistaking the sounds they made either. To this day I will never forget the sound and the feeling, the rush of air and almost feeling you could be sucked into or underneath those cars. When a buddy took off and floored his 440-6pack Air Grabber Mopar as a bunch of us were standing next to him and another guy in his SS396 1967 Chevelle. Woooosh and we were left standing there in clouds of smoke, smell of burned rubber, gas fumes, exhaust and they were GONE! The Chevelle took off with a lead but the Road Runner caught him and walked away at the end. We were actually getting away with that stuff on a state highway in front of a bar and using the Red light to start them off. The road there had a great 5-7 mile straight strip of highway we often had Fri and Sat night street races on where guys with hot cars from as far as 60mi away showed up for. All friendly stuff with no money or titles changing hands like one may see on tv these days. Loser just bought everyone drinks after.
The 1978 Trans Am 6.6 liter (400 ci) was a bit of an outlier with big cubes but when they de-tuned it, it was out of breath by 4500 rpm. You need rpm to make big power. The peak torque was over by about 2500 RPM and dropped badly with RPM. Still, 225 HP in a world of 140 HP V-8’s was pretty good and it could do 0 to 60 in 8 seconds, fairly good for the time.
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