Thread: 402+ Rebuild

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Hey all, been a long time since I posted here. New job, little time. Just dropping a line to let y'all know what's up with the Firebird this year. Dropped her off with my engine builder early February where she sat and sat and sat until he finally cracked her open yesterday. Of course, he finally gets to it while I'm out of town.

A few surprises: previous owner tells me I had a 1969 396+.030 but turns out it is actually a 1972 402+.030 with 1965 97cc heads (first/worst ever stock BBC head). So I was very surprised to learn I was running ~10.2:1 SCR as I was guessing it was much lower already.

Original plan was just top-end work (cam heads intake) to wake her up but not much I can do without giving up CR and #8 was a bit out of round giving a 30% leak down so getting honed and putting in new pistons.

So I'm looking for new pistons and wow, whodathunk nobody makes 396-402 pistons! SpeedPro looks to be the only game in town so I went with 36.6cc dome and am going with a trickflow 113cc oval aluminum head for a SCR around 10.8:1.

Cam will be Lunati roller .630/.630 255/264 @.050.

The goal is quickest ET (low 12's maybe high 11's), streetable on 91 octane at high altitude (Denver). I was running 13.2x@100 all day every day last season.

He got back to me today to tell me his machinist has a 2-bolt 454 block to sell for $400. As tempting as it sounds, I have this irrational desire to make this little BB fast. I told him when I'm ready to go big, I'll be going really big The big one I want to build myself, but currently I don't have the time or tools to do it right.

Anyway, thanks for reading and sorry for the epic post ... just venting and enjoying having the chance to be on the forum again.

-Chris