Budget 383 vortec sleeper build.

[Schurkey]

They still suck? They sucked 20 years ago, you'd think they'd get wind of that and maybe want to do something about it?

No, don't fix the poor quality. Just advertise more, and get some "influencers" to brag-up your crap.

What'ya expect from folks selling parts using a cartoon symbol of America, while sourcing everything possible from the Communists. Their whole business model is based on deception.

 

[L31MaxExpress]

Am I reading this correctly? Your parts suggestion on an L31block?

My 383 is an 880 block. Scat crank, 6" H-Beams and Weisco forged flat tops with deep valve reliefs. The rotating assembly was balanced locally, the Scat crank requires 2 chunks of mallory metal to achieve internal/external balance to be compatible with the stock style balancer and flexplate. Doing it over I probably would have stepped up to a 3.875" stroke for 395 CID and dropped the compression enough to run 87 octane with D-dished pistons. Pump 93 gets $ and E85 is hard to find off the larger cities surrounding the interstates here in Texas. As far as cams go pick one that makes the power where you want it and if you are going with something other than the Vortecs do your homework. Edelbrock offers the excellent Etec170 and 200cc heads, AFR offers the budget Enforcers and a 190cc job. The Enforcers are the same Chinese casting I have, I bought them bare, filled them with good parts and had Lloyd Elliot port them. If you are planning on swapping a different intake manifold, consider going back to the traditional small block intake pattern as it really frees up your intake manifold and cylinder head choices. If your 880 block has the coolant bypass passageways drilled and you run anything other than a stock Vortec you will need to tap the coolant bypass port to 1/8" NPT and install a pipe plug. I forgot that step initially and had water pouring out of the bypass passageway under the water pump when I test started the engine. Then there is some stuff I always run on my SBC builds, single roller cloyes timing set, big block oil pump with a matching bolt on pickup, ARP oil pump stud, longer Milodon windage tray and the larger GM 5qt oil pan.

 

[JeremyNH]

My stroker uses a Scat 4-350-3800-5700-L (same as the HT383), KB 164-40 pistons, and Eagle CRS6000BST connecting rods for a compression height of 9.030" so was expecting to be 0.005" proud. Actual deck clearance was (in the hole):

1 0.015
2 0.006
3 0.006
4 0.004
5 0.007
6 0.008
7 0.008
8 0.008

I didn't have the shop zero deck as I was 13 months waiting already and they didn't offer or suggest. Used Mahle 5776 head gaskets (0.032" compressed) for quench so marginally out on 1 but perfect for 2-8. Also, the Scat crank is listed as internal/external balanced front/back same as the L31. The machine shop said it was easier to add heavy metal to the crank than remove metal from the external balance flexplate I provided so returned it to me internal balanced with my unused external balanced flexplate. Would have been nice to know while I was still in the return window but it's better in the end. So FYI.

 

[Erik the Awful]

Did you ever identify why #1 had twice the clearance as the rest? I wouldn't put heads on it without knowing.