i just inherited from my exwife her mothers 1 owner 79 nova 4 door. now i knowthis not the car you like to talk about. my other 2 cars are a 66 tbird with 428 fe and 91 jag xjs with a v12. im telling you neither of these have engine parts are readily available, the jag being the worst. now this old nova that sat for 7 years dead to the world. i threw a battery in it, a splash of gas down its throat and drove it home. now the point of my post, just short of going to the local grocery store, maintenance, hop up, and restoration parts are every where. guys at work have engines trannys and just about anything you could want. for sitting that long the old car seems to be completely happy and willing to go anywhere. i guess what im saying is i have 2 other fairly neat cars, but there is something about these sbc that is a pleasant change of pace. lots of parts easy to work on . yeah i know a sbc is like a belly button everybody has one. my next real street rod , performance , vintage you name it will have a sbc . maybe thats wy everyone has one
gotta love em!! and traditional to boot!!! but only one of my cars has one. '64 vette 365hp 327 raps quick and the side pipes let you know it's runnin.
I predict that soon, guys are gonna get sick of flatheads again and go back to SBC engines, especially with the economy like it is. And they are traditional too, 1955 was 56 years ago already!
i like sbc's for that and that alone. low - medium hp for a daily driver, or a cruiser, they are nice. so what if its a belly button motor.
HAHA, I knew I loved this guy! SBC is the best all around engine ever made. I love everything mechanical but that little design made it so everybody could enjoy going fast . Tim
For your V12 Jag, you may want to swap that out for a Small block Ford. Thats a pretty common thing for other Jag owners, as that V12 is an absolute shit heap in terms of parts availability, reliability and performance. Google it for more info, but there are kits you can buy to swap in a Ford V8. I agree though about the SBC comment. You really cant go wrong with a SBC, just SO much knowledge & parts available, its just crazy.
I still want to build a "very low buck" 327 small block.. One that's good on gas and has some horse power to boot! I was thinking of doing up the motor with a 307 crank from a '68-'72 motor and a 350 4-bolt block if I could find one that's dirt cheap.. I have a pair of 305 4-bbl cylinder heads with 57-58 cc chambers that I could use to boost compression up a tad.. The cam I'd like to use is chevy's #151 which has a nice loppy idle...
Where i'm from and people i know, i can get any flathead, model A or early chrysler hemi part the same day or atleast as fast as anything chev.... I dont see why everyone has uses the excuse that parts are easy to get for SBC's
It pained my Son-in-law, who is a Ford lover through and through, but I put a ZZ4 Chevy crate motor in my '33 Ford Sedan. As was said by others, parts and goodies are everywhere and I got 355 horses with a warranty for a lot less than I would have paid for a Ford crate.
I was ALWAYS a Blue blood Ford guy and still am to a degree but the 350 in My Merc is tits! Just a 330 hp crate engine. I'm a convert. Pretty hard to fault the lil bowtie.
Very much agreed. http://www.proformanceunlimited.com/ Does anybody have any experience with these guys
I have a few spare flatties, a pile of model a stuff, and chrysler stuff is easy, and i got scorces I've never paid over 200 for a good flattie that needs refresing, Ive been GIVEN most of my model a stuff, and hemi's never run over $500 unless they are 392's or 354's. As for disposable stuff like points and such i always run mallory YC's so it is normal over the counter stuff for all of it. Hell it took me a week to get bearings for the 302 chev i'm building from the local parts house!!, WTF??? that should be NORMAL stuff. Granted I'd probably need to order any bearing sizes i havent already stockpiled for the other engines, too but I usually pick up cheap NOS rings, bearings and gaskets for my engines when i come across them, and usually they are practically FREE BTW i aint some old geezer that's been sitting on a stash since the 40's, im 26 and work for a living. It's just a matter of keeping your eye's open and knowing people. Minus machining it aint hard to put a flattie togather for the same price as a warm 327
to answer about yanking the v12 out of the jag. i have no need to pull the v12. the engine itself is fairly solid part. it is all of the rubber and wiring the british put around it that are junk. wiring , fuel lines and such. it runs well since i have done some MAJOR maintenance under the hood. back to my first post after putting a injection harness and all the fuel lines on this beast the lowly sbc is so simple to work on its unreal. you can see all the sparkplugs and you can see or touch all of the other peices that you need to get too. also the jag uses a turbo 400 tranny, and a delco ac comp. thats funny because at the time this car was built jag was owned by ford
I am a flathead guy, but when you look at the fact that the SBC has been around since the mid fiftys and has such an availability of speed parts that are much more affordable, I would say that it is simply the best choice for most rodders.
I like'm because because they are what I know very well. Want a good engine? Want a junk engine? Pick a brand or style, they come in all sizes. Most are no better than their last owner.
Actually the reason that "everyone" has one was the advent of the crate motor and by my way of thinking those are the belly button motors. if you build your own and build it right no one in good conscience can call it a belly button motor. But if praise is what you want, my parts hauler has a '68 Small Block in it. it was last liscensed in '82. I doubt that it was run since then as a tree fell on it, someone started making a show truck out of it, there was no harness in it, no fuel system and ect. It changed hands several times before it came to me. Anyway long story short last winter the grandaughter and I primed the oil pump stabbed a distributer in it and light it off, outside on a 15 degree day. It turned over about 3 times, rump rump rump, just enough to get fuel to the carb. Ran on fast idle for about 2 minutes and I kicked it down, it settled into a smooth idle. It actually took more to get it broke loose from where it was frozen in the dirt that it took to get it to run.
Exactly. No engine has ever had such a successful run IMO. Simplicity, Performance, Value, etc. You can go on and on, but in the end you really can't beat a SBC. There NO WAY a Flathead can be built by the average guy for the same money an AVERAGE guy can do a SBC. And to bag on not being able to get 302 bearings is crazy. For one, that is pretty much the rarest SBC out there, so yes some parts are hard to get but it's the same bearings as a small journal (67-8) or in 69 a large journal SBC would take. I have SBC's in all my stuff!
The only thing hard to get for a 302 is an original intake and original pistons. TRW still has 302 pistons on the shelf but they would not be original and no one repops the intake that i know of. Everything else is available including a blueprint camshaft or it is just a stock SBC part. I do have an affection for flatties but not as a performance engine unless I am looking to build a period piece. Face it a 300 hp flatty is nearly impossible to build and would be the least practicle engine I have ever tried to drive, and I have driven some pretty radical engines over the years. 300 HP doesn't even rank healthy streeter to me. That said I do have an affection for the flatty and I have driven them all over the place when I had them. This is not to bag on the flatthead guys just to put it in perspective for you. If you have a problem with the SBC start your own thread about flatties. I'll come over there and say nice things. Hell I'll even put the SBC in perspective when the SBC guys come by there and bag on your flathead. Now back to praise of the SBC if no one minds. I do have another small block in the garage that makes 400+ HP and has for somewhere in the neighborhood of 130-140K. It has worn out at least 4 bodies, to get an accurate count you would have to ask the Raven I think he is keeping score. It is dailey driven, dailey driven being general transportation not weekend warrior, when it is in a vehicle and has been since '97 when I screwed it together. If I recall it made the HAMB drags 3 or 4 times back when you could make passes all day long. Drove 3 hours down and 3 hours back. Probably not a belly button like the one in my current parts hauler but it is probably worthy of praise. I got lucky on this one and I am very pleased with how it has performed. Shaggy this is not to pour salt in a wound her. I know that you are a lot like me in the scrounging and getting stuff for nuthin or close to it so I'm not going to call BS on your statements. But this deal with the bearings for your 302 taking a week is just wrong. They are normal stuff like you said and you should have been able to get them a lot quicker than that. You could have called Summit Racing and had them quicker than that without even doing overnight on them. I usually get my parts in 3 days and most of my SBC parts come from the Reno warehouse so your delivery time should have been aout the same as mine. Your local part house should take better care of you then that. That's just wrong.
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