Mailbag: Recommending Parts for a 350 Engine Swap into a Chevy II

Q: My current restoration project is a first-gen Chevy II. I need your help to pick out the parts I need for the engine.

The engine is a 350 LZ9 from a 1984 C-30 Chevy van. The carb will be a Holley 750 cfm with vacuum secondaries, the heads will be Edelbrock Performers with 64cc chambers, and it also has a 7-quart Moroso oil pan. I want to bore the block to .030 over and use one of your rebuild kits.

What compression is more acceptable for street use with pump gas—9.73:1 or 10.9:1?

For the valve train, I’ve already purchased some Crane Gold Race Rockers (1.50 ratio). I’d like to use a Crane hydraulic roller camshaft (I’m looking at the CRN-104224, 214°/220° duration at .050 inches, 270°/276° advertised duration, .452 inch/.465 inch lift), and COMP Cams roller lifters and pushrods.

What do you think?

I have a TH-350 automatic with a stock 10-bold rear-end and 3.08 gears.

Do you have any suggestions?

A: Sounds like a cool project!

We would recommend going with the 9.73:1 compression ratio on pump gas.

Here’s the rebuild kit for that ratio and standard size crankshaft.

The camshaft you currently have picked out is for a computer-controlled engine.

Instead of that, we’d recommend the following parts list:

• Crane Hydraulic Roller Camshaft (214°/222° duration at .050 inches, 276°/284° advertised duration, .488 inch/.509 inch lift)
• Crane Hydraulic Roller Lifters
• Crane Chromoly Pushrods
• Cloyes Original Race True Roller Timing Set

We recommend stepping up to 3.73 gears in the back to complement this setup.

Good luck!

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This is another in a series of weekly Q&A Mailbag sessions with Summit Racing’s tech department, in which there are hundreds more. Click here to see them all.