301 upgrades
 

I have a daily driver 79 firebird. I have been tuning the motor over the past couple months and it runs pretty good now for a 301 with 2.56 rear. I plan on changing to an 066 cam and a 4 barrel intake i've been working on. has anyone tried this? how does an 066 feel in a 301. I hope not to loose a lot of low end with the big gear, but hope to gain more power.

in the future I plan to put in a 200R4 with a 3.23 gear.

tell me what you think.

Jason

I plan to do the upgrade of the cam and intake this weekend. currently i'm getting an average of 19mpg before the upgrade. i'll let you all know what I think of the upgrade after i'm finished.

what kind of intake are you working on? 066 is probably about as much cam as a stock 301 can handle. and it's that big of a cam. intake and exhaust ports on 301 heads are tiny little things, as are the valves. if it works out good for you, let me know. i've got another GP with a 301 i wanna do some work to.

I would think porting the heck out of the intake and heads, a little more cam and more rear gears would be the best first stage. Those weird intake ports are a big restriction.

I am not an expert so this style of an intake might be worse then stock. I just did what I thought made sense as I do NOT have the correct spacer or carb for this intake. the secondaries on a normal q-jet seem to be bigger then this intake was made for. I have a 1inch spacer that I have sanded to give the correct placement for the carb. the second spacer is a 1/2 inch. I have not ported the intake as I didn't want to make the ports bigger then the head. I don't plan to take the heads off right now to do any work. this is just a fun project I came up with. it was cheap and that is all i can afford right now. :)

tell me what you think.

I never understood the rationale of a single plane on a 301.

Well I didn't end up having time to change the cam in my firebird, but I did put the intake and carb on the car. supprisingly I did have a gain in power from 2600-4000. i'm happy with the upgrade. one thing I forgot, since I don't have the correct spacer for this intake I didn't have a place to hook up the PVC. I'll make a spot for it like the older intakes when I put the cam in the motor.

Jason:

I ported a set of turbo 301 heads, for a buddy of mine's N/A 301-powered 4-door '80 Bonneville. I must say: I have yet to see a set of heads with less counter-productive intake and exhaust port characteristics; nevermind the sizing of the intake and exhaust valves. I must have done something right, though, b/c even with a very mild Comp Cams grind and a VERY mild powertrain setup: The darned thing runs 14.4's; LOL.

The only real experince with 301s is in ripping them out of cars, (need a couple, I know where to find them pretty easy) it sounds like you have a pretty good handle on what you want to accomplish with your car, out of ceriousiy why are you sticking with the 301? In my oppinon it was the worst engine that pontiac ever put into a car, but once again, thats just me.

it what I have, and it's running well (53,000 miles). when I have more time and money I may build a 400 for it. I also may buy a stock 72 455 for it a friend has.

well I put the 066 cam in this weekend. i've decided 1.5 days is not long enough to do a cam swap. it wasn't fun rushing around. as for the performance. i'm sorry to say I wish I went bigger. maybe a summit 2800 would have been better. it does rev quicker and is more responsive. I'd say a little more power through out, but most of the gain was from 3000+

i'd say my next step is the exhaust and rear end. I have a 3.08 posi I may put in.

update 3/28/06
 

I'm still driving my firebird with 301 and i'm much happier now( 64,000 miles). I wanted to update everyone since this motor is forgotten by most. I found that I had an issue with my distributor and my valves were tighten down to much with the stock nutz. i've change my mind on the 066. I think it was a good choice for this setup. maybe an even better choice would have been a small XE comp cam to build compression since the 301 is 7.5:1.

i've done some transmisson upgrades that have seem to really help things. I changed the stall from the stock 1500 to 2100 with a B&M converter. i've also put a shift kit in and changed the governer to shift at 5,000 instead of 4,000. The motor runs pretty strong now begging me for 3.42 gears.

my car loves the highway, it still very slow from a start, but has good power from 2500-5000. I spend my time mashing the pedal at 35mph. first gear shifts around 65 and second is around 100.

I plan to put in the 3.42 gears in a couple months.

You will be very happy with the 3.42, I swapped to that ratio from a 2.73 and the effect was huge with the 301. I also ditched the stock exhaust and went to 2 1/4 dual system out the back with turbo mufflers. These two changes gave a big seat of the pants increase over the stock setup. I also used lighter springs on this mech. advance and am running 15 degrees of initial timing. Hard to crank when it's hot but gives the best power. The stock cam is 189 degrees duration at 0.050, 0.365 lift, what I think it needs is between 195 and 200 and mid 400s on lift. It is fatally easy to overcam this engine, I once installed a mild street cam in one and it was a total pig, by the time it came up on the cam the VE fell off from the teeny intake runners. This was with open manifolds, so there was not much restriction on the ex. side.

I would love to see what a highly tweaked 301 could do, it would never compete with anything else but would be unique.

Can you provide more specific details about the car and the whole combo? We've got a 301 discussion going on over at the CP board and I'm looking for all data on practical applications of the 301 that work.

Didn't Herb Adams use a 301 for the basis of the engine in the SilverBird? Bored and stroked to 6 litres, and with RAIV heads (modified the block so the water passages matched up), around 600 hp, as I recall. But that's pretty highly "tweaked" ;)

The "rules" would include using the stock heads. I didn't realize other Pontiac heads would bolt up, once you swap heads it's a different engine IMO.

My understanding (only from what I've read) is not that other Pontiac heads will just bolt up, but that they can be made to bolt up with mods to the block, which includes relocating water passages. I'll have to go and check my back issues. I am positive that the SilverBird used RA IV heads on a 366 CID engine. I have some issues of Fast Lines in which VSE was selling the heads.

Sigh...in a phrase, hell no. Herb did not use a 301 block in the Silverbird. Short deck it may have been (like a R.A. V 303 or 366 block), but it was not a 301.

This is from the 6 page article in the September 1978 issue of Road & Track on the Silverbird:

Here's an ad from VSE's "Fast Lines" selling off the engines in October 1981. Can't really tell. Smaller version is a 309, not a 303.

I agree that a short-deck SCCA Trans Am engine makes more sense, perhaps even more so with Tom Nell building it. Probably the magazine got it wrong. Seems like a pretty big error in an otherwise thorough article, though.

You want 301 Mods!
 

Talk to this guy! Stock heads and bottom end. I belive an 067 cam. Clicked off a high 13 sec pass at Norwalk. Blew out the stock rear at Atco last fall. Better than ever now! Look for "Shotgun".

Keep talking guys, my ears are open.

What are the cp boards????? can you post a link

Hi I was wandering If any one knows how much hp or torque increases I could be getting from sum 2800 cam and 1.65 rockers?.(Maybe 20hp?) Im really not very educated in mechanics, so that just a guess. I would also be looking into stall converter maybe 2300, and 3.73 gears. Car already has 4brl and true duals. Was just wandering if any of you guys would have some estimated hp numbers from this setup. If I could get it over 200 horse I would be pleased. Stock 301 i beleive is only 140.

Thx in advance

Hey,that's my car!
The T1000 has a used 301 in it.Upgraded to a Edelbrock (carter) 600 cfm carb,milled a 4 hole spacer to the proper angle and installed it on a holley to Q jet adapter ,cam is a 067 with rhoades lifters,center dump logs,duals that merge before the rear to a single pipe,2500 stall,metric 200 trans,now has 3.36 rear.
It had a 3.70 which was way to much gear,had to shift the poor 301 at 6k or would run out of motor at 3/4 track.Hope to shift in the 5000/5500 range with the "new" rear.
I would not go over a 3.42 rear..
Keep in mind,my new stock 301 springs were only good to .425 lift,be careful with 1.65z.
Using some online claculators,my car has between 180-200hp at the flywheel based on Et and Mph.
With these engines,if you have a choice between "more or less",go with less compared to a normal Pontiac, less gear,less cam etc. etc.

The intake ports on the head are siamesed so there are only 4 intake runners. There really isn't any reason for a dual plane with those heads. I never understood the reason they made such oddball heads in the first place. They could have put some more weight on them and made the ports bigger.
The 301 has an apetite for timing chains. The best recommendation I've heard is to change the timing chain and gears at 50,000 miles. I had one that went 89,000 miles before it jumped time. That's how I found out. Don't let one go anywhere near that long or you're just begging for trouble.

I noticed the chain is just thinner then a normal chain. maybe run a normal pontiac chain instead of a 301 chain. when I tore mine down for a cam swap I notice a real lot of chain slack with only 43,000.

301 performance
 

Not trying to hyjack the post but I have a 301 4brl intake, spacer and carb from an 80 Formula that I would like to quit kicking around the garage. Any offers?