283 rebuild "recipe"

I've got a 283 that I'm planning on dropping in my Model A. It has camel hump heads which I'd like to retain. I'm building a fairly traditional rod. I plan on running a banjo rear end with 4:11 gears, Bias ply tires, wishbones, and a late model t-5 transmission. Obviously, with this set up, the traction and hook up are far from ideal. I'm looking for something on the mild side, that is durable, not going to cost me an arm and a leg, and willing to rev yet maintain decent street manners. I'd also like to run a 3x2 set up, preferably with Strombergs or Holley 94s.

Please let me know what yopu would do if this were your motor, especially regarding head work, cam and valvetrain recommendations would be great.

Thanks!

Use the 94's, they hold gasoline better. Take a look here for lots of period pieces; http://www.vintagespeed.com/ They also have a good rep for their intake systems.

You won't want much torque, that trans will take it, not the rear unless you convert it to later style axles, which can be done and still retain the look. Depending on which camel hump heads you've got they'll either be 1.94 or 2.20 intakes. For your use I don't think it much matters. For a cam, if I wanted to build a "fun" motor I'd look for a cam that resembled the old Duntov 097 cam of '56-63 (preceded the gnarly 30-30 Duntov). Though it was listed at 287 duration it was not that radical, just a nice lope. If you don't mind the maintenance solid lifter would be a notalgic noise, or go hydraulic if you want better ease of operation and less sound. A call or email to Comp Cams would get you their equivalent as I'll bet they've been asked a few hundred times.

You said if it were mine. Here goes.
Bore 0.030"
KB165 pistons
You can float the rods and use the included locks or you can press the pin in the rod without locks. These will be the resulting compression ratios depending on your chamber volume....

55 cc chamber-9.5
58 cc chamber-9.1
62 cc chamber-8.7
64 cc chamber-8.5

If you're going to do it right, you need to know your exact compression ratio before you choose the cam.

I'd juggle deck height and gasket thickness to arrive at a piston to head clearance of 0.035" to 0.040" at TDC. This will give the motor good detonation resistance on pump gas. I'd leave the heads alone except for a good multi-angle valve job with hard seats and some blending right below the seats with a cartridge roll. I'd remove all sharp edges in the chamber and polish it as best I could. I'd talk to a cam grinder when I found out the c.r. and order all the associated parts from the grinder like springs, etc. I'd want the cam's bottom end power to start just off idle. If you want to use a little more cam and still retain all the bottom end, use bleed-down lifters like the High-Intensity from Crane. They will extend the effective "window of operation" of the camshaft by reducing duration and lift at lower r's, thus allowing you to pick the next cam on the list so you can extend the top end a little.

I'd use 1 5/8" headers into 2" pipe, through an "X" right behind the collectors and then onto 2 mufflers of your choice. To please me, they'd be 36" glasspaks with the louver openings turned toward the motor.

I'd resist all temptation to use 3 tiny little air cleaners, no matter how period I wanted to be. I'd adapt a 1-piece oval like Ford used on their 3-2's. The motor is gonna need 100 square inches of filter material to feed air properly.

If there was enough room for it behind the rear carb, I'd use a Davis HEI curved for my application.
http://www.performancedistributors.com/

Exactly the info I'm looking for!
Keep it comin' fellas.

Okay, here goes, I built a 283 several years ago that ran extremely well and never blew up. It also was very streetable. It was my only transportation in college so I couldn't go to wild. I bored the block .060 and used 11:1 pistons. You probably would want to back the compression ratio down some with todays gasoline. I used the small heads with perfect circle valve seals and just had a good valve job done on them. I used an Iskaderian cam, duration 280, lift .429. It loped a little but not much. It reved extremely fast to 6000 rpm. I ran 1 or 2 carter afb carbs depending on what I wanted to do and would suggest an edelbrock for carburation. I used a dual point distributor, which worked fine, but a petronix unit or something equal would be better. Mallory, MSD or whatever. Headers helped a great deal. I don't think brand is all that important on an engine of this size if you are not all out racing. the reason I say this is because I built my own and they worked well. Spend the money and balance the engine. It helps it to rev faster and makes it last longer I think. Now for the results. I raced a lot of GTO's, 396SS chevelles, Mustangs, stuff with big motors and lots of horsepower. I was never beaten by them because I could pull them so far off of the line they could not catch me in a 1/4 mile. However, a Formula S Baracuda gave me a hard time. I beat them because my 283 would rev up to 6000 rpm so fast, I could be in 3rd gear when they would go to 2nd. After that if was usually all over. I just bought an old 283 for $150.00 thinking I would rebuild it much like I described, but put a late model pair of heads on and see what it would do. These are fun motors and getting kind of hard to find. Good luck

what do I lose by using an old 3x2 set up versus a 4 barrel?

With todays 4 barrels, you can get more cfm with one carb than some of the old 3x2 setups had. I didn't like having to mess with the 3x2's all the time. They look neat and you can do it if you want to, just make sure you have real 3x2 carbs instead of just 3 old 2 barrels you picked up somewhere. The front and back carbs should not have idle air screws and should be able to shut off completely when not under a load. Also, they won't have chokes on them.