The Stovebolt Site Forums The Shop Area The HiPo Shop In Retrospect, I should have kept an I-6 in it...

350's have been produced for the longest period of time of any small block, therefore there are more out there. They first appeared in the Camaro in the late 60's, and production continued until the L98 engine in the Corvettes in the late 80's. That's 2 decades. They went to a new generation in the LT1 and LT4 engines into the 90's but were still based on the same motor. They didn't go into a totally new small block design until the LS1 engine, 3 decades after the 350 was first introduced.

Yes, it cost more like 4 grand to build the big block Pontiac motor in my Firebird. It is cheaper to build a more common engine.

And this does relate to the straight sixes. I think they tend to be expensive to modify and build up because their parts are not so common. Even if a company came out with a twin overhead cam aluminum head for a stovebolt, they'd have to price it so high to recover their tooling cost that few people would probably buy it. The stovebolt is a more challenging engine to build.