79 Caprice with cammed 350

Heres a video of my mild cammed 350, Its a stock GM Goodwrench 350 with the low compression 76cc heads, about 8:1 compression. It has the basic bolt on mods, edelbrock 2101 intake, holley 600cfm vac sec carb, headers, true duals with flowmaster original 40's and an x pipe.

I will be installing some EQ vortec heads, and ill bump the compression up to 9.5:1 so the cam should sound better, and i cant wait for it. You can see that journey here: https://www.gmbbodyforum.com/t281-vortec-head-350-project-build

Sounds great love the slightly lopey idle.
I have a 350 with same low compression heads with polished Speedmaster intake, stock qjet, accel dizzy and am looking at a comp cams high energy camshaft that's carb legal.
My question is should I wait to do the full rebuild or break in the cam with this motor for now.
Won't get rebuilt probably till next year around this time.
Since I put the intake the performance shot up off the line, passing on the freeway, mileage, blowing new cars off the stop lights.
The 95 impala rear should help with a 200-4R trans I have my eye on.

I asked myself the same question and decided to break the cam in on the old softer springs. Once the new heads go on they will be getting much harder springs, so i wanted to be safe with the cam. I forget you live in CA and have to have all that Carb approved stuff, which sucks. Here in NC we have inspections, but cars older than 35 years dont have to have one, cars before 1996 dont have to have an emission inspection, but need a safety inspection.
It doesnt sound bad, I like it, i know the bump in compression will help out a lot.
The 2004r are great transmissions, i want to put one in mine. Ive had a few 700r4s (not in this car) but i dont really like them. I dont like the gear ratios they have and 1st to 2nd shift is always hard. The 2004r has better gear ratios, and i think are the same length as the th350 or 400, i cant remember.

Sounding great Bro!


I'm like a little kid. If I have a nice cam but my engine rebuild is still a year away, it would immediately go into my existing engine, lol.

HeavyChevy77, I like that you're using a Q-jet. Great carb, just misunderstood by most people. I lol when people bash the Q-jet but use an edelbrock carb which is quite similar.

IIRC, the 200-4r is the same length as the th400, and I believe the mount is in the same location also. There's several aftermarket dual exhaust x-members available too.

Yea I wanna put the cam already to break it in so I might do that.
Did you change your cam bearings by the way?
As for the 200-4r its the same as the powerglide and th350
The mount is towards the back of the trans by the tailshaft and the th350 is near the middle.
On superychevy I think says the crossmember gotta be slip about 2" back and might have to enlongate the mounting hole for trans to crossmember.
Also they use the same spline count driveshaft.
And I love my qjet its reliable and works great ..just needs a tune haven't got it serviced in over 4+ years besides the occasional seafoam bath

Yea cali sucks cause of the smog law. I wish is was a 75 instead of 77 so I would.t have to smog

Nope didnt have to change the bearings, its a new crate motor i bought 2 years ago, 16,000 miles on it. They looked good, i checked the ones i could see. I love qjets, ive rebuilt many of them and have always had good luck with them. I actually have my qjet on in the video, i sold my holley since im going to get a bigger one. I had the original qjet stored away for two years, i rebuilt it just before i removed it. Installed it, poured some gas in the bowl and it fired right up, theyre good carbs.

Yea very solid and when those secondarys open up and the car goes whoosh.
I might just go ahead and swap it ive heard ove others doing the same no issues. Just gotta use zinc additive every oil change.
As for taking a qjet apart that's something I'm hesitant to do...lots of parts

Use Joe Gibbs, im a die hard fan of joe gibbs, good oil, expensive but worth it. I broke both cams in with it. And i used valvoline vr1 10w30 racing oil with a bottle of zddplus from eastwood after the break in. I dont think im going to use it anymore, it was fairly cheap and i could get it at my parts store, but i cant find it anymore, have to order it online, but i was reading articles saying the zinc content was less than advertised. So now im going to spend the extra money and use joe gibbs (its called "Driven" now by joe gibbs). I dont use synthetic, i use the tried and tested conventional.

I was looking at this one on summit racing Joe Gibbs driven hr-2 10w30 mineral...that's the conventional right.
So should I use that at and conventional oil 10w-30?what bout the high mileage oil.
I was thinking 1qt Joe.g 4qt reg oil, engine restore can for v8

Im not sure about the engine restore, i think id just use seafoam in the oil first to clean it out, then run a high zinc conventional. Yes the mineral is conventional. High mileage is supposed to have slightly more zinc content but thats based off the modern oils and its still not enough for flat tappets. Well let me rephrase that, hi perf flat tappets, most older motors from the 70s and 80s with low compression use soft springs and wont typicallysee a wiped lobe with modern oil, but the risk is still there regardless, a risk i didnt want to take. Just keep the oil changed often, use a hi mileage oil if you want just add a bottle of zddp. How many miles do you have? Do you have a 350 or 305 i couldnt remember if you said.

It's a 350 I got it with 86k on the odo but Idk of that's og miles I'm the 3 rd owner the second didn't drive it much and the original owner was some old guy named Chester had custom plates on it [ I have the white 90's plates:'( ] so I don't thing he drove it often it was pretty straight when I got it small rust spot on the hood and door jamb.
When I got to 99988 miles I unpluged the speedo to disablr the odometer cause I was gonna do a rebuild and wanted to count it from the first mile with that . But im gonna make a cluster like myloth.
So to answer maybe 150,000 if the miles were correct or 250k+ if its rolled over once already. Runs very very strong by the way. I still need to get the qjet tuned to the new intake.

Oh man, that sounds awesome!

Would any of you do the cam swap and cam only and run it like that for almost a year beacuse that's when I'll have money for new Pistons lifters rods crank.

I would, and i did