Dave's Nova Site

400 Small Block Swap

I finally decided to get my butt in gear here and post the pictures of the 400 Small Block 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.

All rolls have been scanned ... just have to format the time line next ...

Project MEAN GREEN, The Day by Day report of 400 Swap

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