305ci

I purchased a 56 chevy last fall. It was suposed to have a 350 in it out of a 1991 corvette. After further investigation I found out it was a 305ci out of a 1987 Iroc Camaro. Any sugestions on how to get a little more power out of this engine? I put in a G&N air filter to start off. It is the TPI engine.

You can always squeeze more power here and there, but a 305 TPI is pretty maxed out already.

You can get some more kick with a set of full roller rockers, and cam change. You can talk to crane about the computer friendly cams they have, or talk to www.tpis.

You need to see if you have a roller cam in there. The 87 could go either way, and of course it could have been changed.

Here is the good thing.

a type II 350 block can reuse your 305 roller cam parts. So, if you luck up and get a 1987-and up 350 bare block, you can build it and save some $$ on reusing the roller lifters and rev kit.

If you buy roller rockers for the 305 and later upgrade to a 350, you can reuse those as well.


Most people will discourage you from trying to do anything with the 305, except for servicing it and keeping it running well.

garstar I have a 305 in my 37 chevy truck and I bored it out .060 to 315 CI. I also ran a modified cam with headers and a performer intake with a 600 cfm carb. Increased my HP by 50. If you really want to go nuts on it you can put a better set of Vortec cylinder heads. DO NOY BORE this block over .060 as there not much left of the cylinders. Bart

Thought you like to know how I first started woeking on falthead engines. I was 14 and living in Vermont when my buddy and I saw a 40 ford coup sitting in a field up to its bumpers in mud. We asked the farmer if we could work on it and he said if you get it running you can have it. The motor was frozen and we started tearing it apart with the few tools we had. Took the heads off and saw the pistons were rusted to the cylinder walls. Not knowing what to do about this we preceded to find a tree limb the size of the pistons and started wacking away. It took awhile but we did free the engine up without breaking anything. Took sandpaper(no money for anything else) and sanded the cylinder walls as smooth as we could. Slapped everything back together using a adheasive for tractors, drained the fuel tank, took the carb off(stromberg?) cleaned it up and resemble it. The farmer managed to pull the car out with his tractor and he had some old tires that fit. He gave uf a 6 volt battery from his tractor and after pouring sosme gas down the carb we tried to fire it up. It took some time but it did run, just barely, no compression. We left a cloud of blue smoke,(never changed the oil, again no money) and drove it away in second gear as that was the only one working. Thats how I started my life with cars. Bart

Hot rob Magazine had a article on 305 heads. I am sorry I cannot remeber which issue but it has a lot of casting numbers. I have always belived that all your power was in your top end. that is were I would start.