So I have a 68 350 bird. Got it from relative back when I was in High school in the 80’s. Always told it had a different engine. Last year lost 2nd gear in the tranny. Had to pull the motor and tranny out the front to get it out. Engine is a 481990 casting which looks to be a 71 or 72 350 block. Heads have ‘A 94’ on them. Engine needs serious cleaning, gaskets, etc., but ran fine. Is it worth it to put new heads on, cam, intake, 4 bbl on and upgrade the tranny? Not sure where the money is best spent since it doesn’t appear to be numbers matching. I’m mechanically inclined, but not a mechanic. Appreciate all opinions.
I’d like to throw some power adders at it since I finally have it out. Just don’t want to spend money on it if it isn’t a good base block to work with. It was vastly under powered with the 2 bbl carb, stock manifolds and so on.
I'm pretty much in the exact same boat, have a perfectly good running 350 2bbl engine which I put a 4bbl on 30 years ago, it probably only has about 30,000 on a rebuilt with 11 heads (low comp small valve about 8.2:1) but since I am totally restoring my car and have the fenders off and it's easy to pull the engine out right now. I would like to find some big valve heads that would give me about 9.5:1 and maybe change the cam to 067 or 068 and leave the rest as is, problem is finding the damned heads. Seems Pontiac parts (at least here in BC) are non existent these days, and only 25 years ago I bought a WT engine complete for $200 but that went into a '70 LeMans rag I was restoring at the time . I also have a 455 core which I may rebuild this winter...so for now I may just leave everything as is as I want to drive it this summer.
If it were me I would try to find heads as I described and same with the cam, that will really perk up the old girl, but that's just me. Depends on time, money and a pile of other things.
Good luck, keep us posted on what you find/decide.
Cheers
PS check out this site, he has all the codes for heads, cams, blocks and everything else Pontiac. You can see what to look for quite easily.
