Originally Posted by Wedgy
Welcome to the Site Sir with that well wrenched on Rig. That's alot of well done work. Nicely done! Quite sure Pops is proud.

I am sure pops would be. Although when I put the first replacement Vortec 350 in this van back in 2005ish he was pretty mad at me. The old 350 had self destructed on startup on him by hydro locking on coolant from a leaking intake gasket. Broke the #2 connecting rod which then munched the cam and block. When I put the new crate engine in, I replaced the spider and removed that stupid EGR diffuser plate on the vortec throttle plate. The torque converter had also been slipping so I put a reman for a 4.3 S10 into it. Behind the L31 it stalled 2,500 rpm. Then I had a friend that had TunerCatsOBD2. We put a bit of a power tune in the PCM. The tuning included a massive timing table change. Not having much to go off of since neither of us had worked much on the 5.7L Vortec, my friend had a Ramjet 350 timing table. We put the Ramjet 350 timing map into the Vortec PCM and pulled a couple of degrees of timing out of the whole map for the weight of the van and the fact dad always ran 87. Dad got it back after I had broken in the engine. He bitched at me for a couple of weeks because he could not accelerate from a stop without burning the tires which I found odd because his other vehicle was a 1994 Ram 2500 regular cab long bed 2wd with the V10 Magnum which was the lightest truck you could get that engine in. The factory PCM had died in that truck and I had replaced it with a mopar performance unit calibrated for a colder thermostat and a low restriction exhaust and air cleaner. Cats had failed so we did what everyone else had done and gutted them. That truck was way touchier than the van on the get up and go pedal. My brother who was still at home and rode to school with my dad said my dad would burn the tires out of every stop and not intentionally. Eventually he relearned the go pedal and enjoyed having the extra get up and go when needed. He upped it to P295/50R15s from P235/75R15s when it needed tires and it was much easier to get off a stop without smoking the tires. My dad was mostly a putt around kind of guy but he would occasionally break his foot off in the go pedal. I remember one time he had the Q-Jet on the old 83 G20 305 singing for several miles with the needle on the 85 mph speedo wrapped around and pegged on the back of the 0 mph stop. First time I had ever been that fast in a vehicle. He had a guy in about a 95 Chevy truck that kept trying to cut him off so he just flat footed the carb 305 that was not governed like the TBI was and made him vanish in the rearview mirror. The 83 had eaten a cam and lifter somewhere around 120K miles when I was about 10 in 1995. Dad was a coach amd a teacher on a limited budget and had some mechanical experience and I helped him over the course of a week of summer nights pull the heads, take them to the machine shop and replace the cam and upper end gaskets. He had bought a couple of small block chevy books at the local bookstore and we would read up during the heat of the day and work at night and sleep in the next morning. For a 305 it ran really well. Machine shop gave him some kind of .454 lift cam that he said would make it pull dads trailer better. Years later I think I know what cam went into it but it was a huge kick in the pants over the tiny factory cam and it had a little lope to it. After we got the cam broken in we had driven the van around with the dog house off and played around with the distributor to get the timing set by ear. Q-Jet had an awesome sound opening up with the doghouse cover off. This kickstarted my interest in cars and engines.

Last edited by 1983G20Van; May 31st 2021 12:04 am.

1983 G20 Conversion Van, 350 TPI, Reed Hydraulic Roller cam, Ported 906 Vortec, Edelbrock 3817 TPI-Vortec Base, Doug Thorley Tri-Ys, Dual 2 1/2" exhaust, Speed Density 7730 ECM tuned by ME, 700r4 by ME, Stock 1,600 rpm converter, Rebuilt Stock 10 bolt with posi by ME, 3.08 gears, 358 RWHP @ 5,200, 384 RWTQ @ 3,400, 14.66 @ 95.43 w 2.28s 60'