I finally decided to get my butt in gear here and post the pictures of the 400 Small Block Build & Swap I did back in 2002.
During the fall of 2002, I was talking with Glenn one day, who was telling me about this killer 400 he was planning to build for his firebird. At the same time, I was thinking of rebuilding my 350, I was thinking ... Stroker! So after throwing around some numbers, specs and stuff and of course playing with Desktop Dyno, I was pretty impressed with some of the numbers Glenn came up with for the 400.
So the search for a 400 block was on. My friend Kelly (with the 67 Firebird 400) told me about his friend Chris who would sell a 400 to me if it was for my nova. Turns out Chris was getting married (poor guy) and needed money. So after some thought and thinking about the numbers, I decided I was gonna build a 400 for my nova.
The next day I went to work and saw Glenn. Good news & bad news I told him, I found a 400, bad news, I'm building a 400. Wasn't sure how'd Glenn would take it, but he went along with it.
First I had to decide what I was gonna do. I thought about just freshen the motor and putting it back in. Glenn then did his research and came up with a beautiful setup for this motor. It was now time for me to save up some money and prepare to build this motor. After talking with a few friends (Kelly & Glenn), I decided to go all-out and buildup this motor.
It was decided to bore it .030 over, go with Keith Black Pistons with a 12cc dish, get the heads fixed up and drilled out for bigger valves.
It took roughly 33 days thruout the spring & summer of 2003, to get everything done. Mostly because I kept running out of money and would have to wait until the following payday.
The motor was kept a secret for so long, only 4 people knew about it and knew my intentions. After dropping it in the nova, it was still kept a secret for a months until I decided to post the new specs on the website, and then the rumours started.
I even kept a timeline and followed through with it this time.
Project MEANGREEN! - Day by Day report of 400 Build/Swap