need help on which route to take for a motor

[Ole Greenie]

It does have an open diff with a 3.08 gear set. This is my play truck. I do drive another car everyday which is a older 2000 BMW 540i that goes pretty good too. I couldn't afford to drive the truck every day! I run out of beer money!

[pockets]

i too have to vote for cubic inches, be it a 383 or a 496. With both combos you can build the bigger motor for not much more than the equivalent smaller motor, say the 350 or 454/427. If it is purely a street motor you can get complete cast rotating assemblies balanced and all that fairly cheap. I got bought mine from summit for $750, all balanced, includes flexplate and balancer, steel crank, floating pinned hypereutectic pistons, etc. The same kit for a 355 (both are .030 over remember) is $600. The extra cubes are worth a good 40hp and 40ft/lb with the same heads cam, etc.

I'm basing mine off of a recent super chevy article and with AFR 195cc heads and a hydraulic flat tappet cam it puts out almost 500ftlbs of torque and 480hp.

As another member mentioned, the problem with old school 400's is the need for head drilling, and good blocks aren't as easily found anymore. If you want a 40X, there is a stroker kit for a 350 that uses a 4 inch stroke crank, vs. the 3.75 inch for a 383, that puts it at 408 cubes. now if you use an LS style block, that's a different story, lots of 400+ engines around based on those.