Vortech Heads

[24c3]

My truck has 147.xxxx miles on it right now, and it runs pretty good. I was wondering if i should go ahead and rebuild the engine and upgrade to Vortech heads and a better cam or can i get away with just bolting the Vortechs and came in just like that. Any info would be great.

 

[GMCTRUCKS]

I have a set in my garage I have heard tons of members saying it's a pain to get it tuned and it's just not worth it.

 

[MOBS]

You would need a tbi-to-vortec intake manifold, I did this just for shitz on a high mileage tbi-350, but I just put in an rv cam, nothing special. I don't recall ever getting ecm errors, but I do recall the low rpm power getting a bit of a boost. It had the pulling power at 1800rpm of what used to take getting 2500rpm to do. Vortec replacements are usually the most sought after upgrade for the tbi, but they have a different egr routing, which may be what's caused some people issues.

Also, when doing a cam swap on a non-roller engine, you HAVE to change the lifters with the cam. It's the same as when you're changing the cam chain, gotta change gears with it.

 

[GMCTRUCKS]

You would need a tbi-to-vortec intake manifold, I did this just for shitz on a high mileage tbi-350, but I just put in an rv cam, nothing special. I don't recall ever getting ecm errors, but I do recall the low rpm power getting a bit of a boost. It had the pulling power at 1800rpm of what used to take getting 2500rpm to do. Vortec replacements are usually the most sought after upgrade for the tbi, but they have a different egr routing, which may be what's caused some people issues.

Also, when doing a cam swap on a non-roller engine, you HAVE to change the lifters with the cam. It's the same as when you're changing the cam chain, gotta change gears with it.

So what year did rollers come out on trucks like ours? Yes just the intake is $400.00 that's a lot plus I heard that it's best to get bigger injectors and fuel pump & regulator but as I wrote that's what they recommed or have read. On my truck I have 181K and I says why mess up a good thing.

 

[MOBS]

Yeah, I snatched all the parts off an 84 model 350 with a cracked block, the person had converted over from 73cc heads to vortecs. I machined an adapter to bolt the tbi to the 2bbl intake and stuck it on a 200k tbi-350. It ran ok, but ran better after putting 2 quarters under the regulator. I understand whatcha mean though and I'm in no way a fan of vortec heads, I prefer fuelie heads personally....maybe I just got lucky

Rollers were somewhere between 96 & 98....I wanna say it was 97, but I'm probably wrong being it's 3:15am. I know my 95 was flat tappet and my 98 was roller, as far as sbc goes. My 99 bbc is flat tappet....GM confuses me

You can easily upgrade to roller just by getting siamese roller lifters though, it's not a really hard upgrade and you can clean out your intake and valvetrain area while you've got the intake, cam cover, and valve covers removed.

 

[woody80z28]

Rollers came in trucks starting in 96. But they came in cars starting 87. If the truck you are talking about is the 92 in your sig, there is a decent chance your block is roller-ready. My 94 was. If so, you can convert with OEM parts on the cheap. I went with an LT1 cam, LS7 lifters, TPI timing set and L31 retainers, spider & pushrods.