The Stovebolt Site Forums The Shop Area The HiPo Shop 383 solid lifter cam?

In y'all s opinion. Is it fact or old wives tale that a 383 with solid lifters needs to have valves adjusted more often? If so how often under normal driving ( not racing) conditions ? Thanks

An engine with a solid lifter cam needs to be installed in a vehicle with acetyline headlights, mechanical brakes, and a hand crank. All those items are the same degree of obsolete. Yes, solid lifters need to be adjusted periodically- - - - -maybe every 10K miles or so. Once they get slightly out of adjustment, you'll either get burned valves (too tight) or battered rocker arm tips and valve stems (too loose). A good set of hydraulic lifters, adjusted properly, should last 100K miles or more without any further attention. The old wives' tale about solid lifter engines performing better is also a myth- - - -I've gotten 600+ HP and 7K+ RPM on the dyno out of hydraulic lifter engines.
Jerry

Pete,

This is an excellent forum for Chevy performance wisdom:

http://www.chevytalk.org/fusionbb/showforum.php?fid/72/keyword/Chevy_Performance/

The moderator's handle is Grumpyvette. When he answers a question like yours he also includes a lot of previously published information so you can see for yourself what his information is based on. He often also includes a lot of graphics.

This is germane to a stovebolt engine how???

We can only assume it started life as a small block Chevy not a Mopar. The question does pertain to HiPo stuff though.

I notified the forum Mods.

Thanks so much. Good site!

My understanding is that the 383 engine swap in my 58 Chevy 3200 started with a 350 block Trying to decide whether to keep it and spend money on restoring other parts of truck or putting a used 283 in it. Only way to decide such questions, for us hobbyist , is to seek advise on practical maintainece concerns from experts and more experienced hobbiest. Thank you for your help and thoughs.

A "383" is a Chevy 350 bored 30 over and stroked to 3 3/4" with a small block 400 crankshaft. For some unknown reason the hotrodders think that engine walks on water. It's really a difficult buildup that requires a lot of expensive machining, with a whole bunch of drawbacks. A well-built 350 will eat its lunch every day. If it's already in your truck, maybe you should consider swapping the cam and lifters for something like a Comp Cams 268H hydraulic and drive on. Solid lifter cams have a very limited use, mostly in extreme RPM racing applications. I can't think of a good reason to run a solid lifter cam in a street machine.
Jerry

Thanks

Pete,

In this article Hot Rod Magazine states "Chevy 383s destroy 350s in overall power".

http://www.hotrod.com/articles/hrdp-0503-chevy-383-engine/

That is hardly news and HRM details out how to do that very popular engine build. Over the decades the various enthusiast publications have had different versions of that same article on how the a 383 makes 40-50 more horsepower and foot pounds of torque that a 350. If nothing else those articles are interesting reading.

I think the point Jerry was making is why would you go to all that trouble and extra expense when the 400 small block makes again 40 to 50 more HP and torque than the 383 for less money. All the myths about the 400 being thinner in the cylinders and running hot are just that. The 383 was purely born out of a marketing ploy and hyped up to make it something it wasn't.

Real life experience trumps Google anytime- - - -the 383's my competition ran saw the back end of my car diving into the turn ahead of them on a regular basis. We ran 327's and the occasional 350, and easily turned them up 1500 RPM tighter than those grasscutter strokers could manage. "Build 'em little- - - -wind 'em tight- - - -and get the chemicals just right!"

The 252 cubic inch small block Chevy with the 2 7/8" stroke that I've got under construction at the moment will run 8K+ RPM all day. If my driver manages to get out front with that one, the only thing the race will determine is "Who ran second?"
Jerry

"I think the point Jerry was making is why would you go to all that trouble and extra expense when the 400 small block makes again 40 to 50 more HP and torque than the 383 for less money. All the myths about the 400 being thinner in the cylinders and running hot are just that. The 383 was purely born out of a marketing ploy and hyped up to make it something it wasn't."

12 Port,

I'm as far from an expert in this as a person can be but I thought the 400 small block engines were pretty rare items. Over the decades it's seemed unusual to pick up an enthusiast magazine without seeing some version of "How to build a 500 HP 383 small block". It's not an exercise I would go through because in a light street rod roadster like mine even a mild 350 is overkill and that 500 HP doesn't show up until the 383 is spinning 5000+ RPM which is useless for street driving. What I recall about the 383 conversion articles is that it's so common that the parts cost about the same as 350 parts, although a small base circle camshaft and some grinding of the pan rails are required to accommodate the lengthened stroke.

"500 HP"- - - - - -what's that, a go-kart engine? 630 HP from a single 4-barrel 358 was just average, and we didn't wind that one much over 6500 RPM. It was still building torque on the dyno when the car owner decided "That's enough- - - - -let's go racing!"
Jerry

Nowadays it is common, but back at the beginning in the late 1980's, the only way to create one was by taking a 400 crankshaft and turning the mains down, or buying an $800-$1000 Lunati crank or some other top shelf crank companies. I worked in a pretty large race shop in North Georgia during that era and 400's were not rare or hard to find. It took another 8-10 years after the 383 craze started before companies like Scat and Eagle began to offer cranks for the 383 conversion. And they were still pricey at the beginning, still making a 400 the better bang for the buck.

Packing 10 pounds of potatoes in a 5 lb. sack seldom works well. In order to take full advantage of the 400 stroke the block would need to be at least an inch taller for the piston/rod/crankshaft geometry to work right. At least the Ford 351's and the Mopar 413/426/440's used a raised block configuration when they stroked those engines. Add the fact that external balancing is needed for the 400 strokers and things really get dicey at anything much above 6K RPM. The engine is a torquer- - - -don't even think about winding it up without a big box to haul the pieces home in.
Jerry

You never hear much about the 377 for some reason.. 400 block with a 350 crank. Seems like it would be a real screamer

I ran one of those engines at the Merced CA fairgrounds speedway in the late 1970's, a "short quarter" (1/4 mile dirt track measured around the outside wall). It was necessary to weld up and regrind the 350 main bearings to 400 diameter, or buy a $5500.00 King's billet crankshaft. We ran a welded crank. Later, Federal-Mogul and TRW started making thick-shell main bearings to make a 350 crank a drop-in into a 400 block. We ran a 4.56 rear end and a Muncie 4 speed with a 1.88 2nd. gear ratio. That made for a final drive ratio of 8.57:1. RPM around the turns was in the 3000-3500 range depending on tire size, and we usually saw 7K at the end of the straights. The engine had a nasty habit of eating thrust bearings, so we made up a lathe fixture out of two main bearing caps to machine the Babbit metal off the thrust faces and replace it with hard silver solder. We could run half a season on a set of main bearings after that, which was the normal "freshen-up" timetable. That was usually around 800 laps, so an engine with 200 miles on it was an antique!

"Go fast- - - - -turn left!"

Jerry

This brings back memories! We were poor as church mice back in the day but still hated to run at the rear so we used (I believe) a cheap Michigan 0.040 main bearing in the 400 block and then fly cut a groove in it for the 350 main bearing lock tab. Most others swore by Clevite but we had better life out of Federal Mogul AP though it did eat a crank if any trash circulated through the system. Poor boying it on gears we used a Chevy 6 cyl pickup 3.00 low gear 3sp and then a Ford 9" in the 2.75 to 3.25 range as this got us in the 8.00:1 final range, were easy to find, and CHEAP. Running in low gear we didn't need an kind of shift levers but just a pto shift cable to select low-neutral-reverse. We didn't use the water soaked alcohol from the track pump but rather super dry methanol from a company that made dyes. Allowed much more leeway in tuning and after seeing the car run at the front the dye company sponsored us with FREE fuel. The reason for not just running a 400 was everything (long rods, forged pistons, forged crank, etc) for them was expensive and our accessory parts (balancer, flywheel, clutch, etc) were all for an internally balanced engine. Looking back I believe ones with skinny pocketbooks are the ones that really advance the sport.

I beat so many of my competitors by running their "junk" parts that it finally got difficult to get anything from them, even if they were planning on throwing it away. A "worn out" 60 over block with all sorts of trick machine work done to it could always be sleeved back to stock bore, and I had a boring bar! Still got it, BTW!
Jerry