Anything I should do to the 403?

Well the last couple days I have been working on scraping all the crap off my 403 to get it ready to go in the Cutlass. While I have this thing out and it is easy to get to everything is there anything I should look at doing? Not looking to go extreme with this engine, it will basically just be a fun street car until I come up with the funds for building some sort of forced induction engine in the future (maybe a stroker DX block build since I have one in the shop). I do have a Edelbrock performer intake to go on it mostly it will save weight over the massive cast iron stock unit. Also have some headers to replace the stock manifolds, nothing fancy though.

So yeah for now just something reliable and fun is all I am out for right now. It will have TH350 behind it and the rear is a 7.5 with 3.23 gears and posi.

You are scraping a 403? Good job!

In reply to Ranger50:

Don't make me come over there. Keeping the 403 for awhile until funds allow for something more fun to be built in the future.

Besides the 403 could be a fun little engine. Certainly has plenty of torque stock

Delete smog cam if so equipped?

Kenny_McCormic wrote: Delete smog cam if so equipped?

my thoughts exactly - between the intake, exhaust, and something like this, you'll likely make double the original output, more fun noises, and more smiles.

http://www.summitracing.com/parts/cca-k42-227-4/overview/make/oldsmobile

rings, brgs, valve job, carb, intake, cam, headers, ignition curve kit

old school freshen up

New freeze plugs while it's out, cause they're a pain in the car.

A cam and a non-nylon timing set would be a great upgrade. If you do a valve job, you might as well give porting the heads a shot, it's not like you can make them flow worse, right?

In reply to psychic_mechanic:

A quick port match certainly wont wont hurt.

just spray the color on and stab it in... anything else just snowballs into a $3k rebuild that takes 6 months..

I STILL have that Olds EFI intake....

If you were local, I 'd cut you a deal on my 455 I have for sale so you could scrape that instead of a 403. Too bad you are on the other side of the country.

+1 for a cam upgrade. Mine woke up nicely with a cheapo Melling "RV" cam.

novaderrik wrote: just spray the color on and stab it in... anything else just snowballs into a $3k rebuild that takes 6 months..

This ^^^^^

ebonyandivory wrote:

novaderrik wrote: just spray the color on and stab it in... anything else just snowballs into a $3k rebuild that takes 6 months..

This ^^^^^

Dude, a cam/intake/headers on an engine on a stand should take a day if you take your time cleaning gaskets and degreeing the cam.

Camcamcamcamcamcamcamcamcamcamcamcamcamcamcamcamcam.

It's not the difficulty of the install, it's what happens when you tear down something to do a "simple" upgrade, and find more issues you have to address before you can do what you set out to. I agree a cam would be the way to go, since he's already putting on headers and changing the intake. But with a cam comes new lifters, and then he may have to get new pushrods if they don't spec out with the new lifters or are bent, and he might find a bent or damaged rocker, and might as well do a new timing set while you're there, etc. etc. That's when it starts to snowball into a 3K rebuild that takes 6 months.

those big smog engines get a bad rap. Cleaned up and hotrodded, they are wonderful ways to turn air and hydrocarbons into long black streaks on the road

Spray bomb it and drop it in.

Cam, maybe a rear main seal.

On a 403, simple stuff. Recurve the distributor (HEI of course), tune the carb, and add headers/dual exhaust and that's about it. It'll only run to about 4500 rpm, so the final drive you have in there is a bit steep. I've run in the 2.73 range in the rear with good results in a 403 T/A that ran 13s with only those changes.

tuna55 wrote:

ebonyandivory wrote:

novaderrik wrote: just spray the color on and stab it in... anything else just snowballs into a $3k rebuild that takes 6 months..

This ^^^^^

Dude, a cam/intake/headers on an engine on a stand should take a day if you take your time cleaning gaskets and degreeing the cam.

the operative word in your sentence is "should".. what happens when the new cam doesn't break in properly and goes flat? that is very common these days thanks to crappy metallurgy in cam cores and/or oil that doesn't have enough good stuff in it any more and/or cheap lifters that don't have the crown on the faces machined properly... i think the deepest i'd go into this particular engine would be a new timing chain if it's got more than about 5 degrees of slop as indicated on the timing pointer and maybe a new oil pump and oil pan gaskets..

this is just a placeholder engine- just clean it, paint it, and stab it in... save the good stuff for the "real" engine that's going in later..

novaderrik wrote:

tuna55 wrote:

ebonyandivory wrote:

novaderrik wrote: just spray the color on and stab it in... anything else just snowballs into a $3k rebuild that takes 6 months..

This ^^^^^

Dude, a cam/intake/headers on an engine on a stand should take a day if you take your time cleaning gaskets and degreeing the cam.

the operative word in your sentence is "should".. what happens when the new cam doesn't break in properly and goes flat? that is very common these days thanks to crappy metallurgy in cam cores and/or oil that doesn't have enough good stuff in it any more and/or cheap lifters that don't have the crown on the faces machined properly... i think the deepest i'd go into this particular engine would be a new timing chain if it's got more than about 5 degrees of slop as indicated on the timing pointer and maybe a new oil pump and oil pan gaskets.. this is just a placeholder engine- just clean it, paint it, and stab it in... save the good stuff for the "real" engine that's going in later..

Well, he asked us to opine. I did and now so have you. No worries, I stand by mine and you likely by yours.

If you can find them, Olds 350 heads will bolt right on and raise compression significantly. Some are better than others (been a while, I don't remember which), but all are better than what's on there.

dorri732 wrote: If you can find them, Olds 350 heads will bolt right on and raise compression significantly. Some are better than others (been a while, I don't remember which), but all are better than what's on there.

Olds #5 heads are the hot ticket. They came on 1968 350's and are hard to come by these days, and if you do, they can be expensive. It's really not worth it.

Oh, and I HATE 403's. I had one in my Trans Am as well, except mine was a turd. Also, they have windowed main webbing. I don't care if they make girdles or braces or anything else, there just shouldn't be holes there. No power adders allowed with these or the crank leaves.

SilverFleet wrote: I STILL have that Olds EFI intake.... If you were local, I 'd cut you a deal on my 455 I have for sale so you could scrape that instead of a 403. Too bad you are on the other side of the country. +1 for a cam upgrade. Mine woke up nicely with a cheapo Melling "RV" cam.

We need to find a GRMer network doing a cross country run for parts. I originally was looking for a 455 but could not find one local to save my butt. The 403 kinda fell in my lap as a gift from the wife.

Yeah I was thinking about the cam but as mentioned I would hate to just start running into spending more and more.

In reply to rebelgtp:

Gift from wifey? Paint it, drop it in, and take her for a cruise! like now.

Did you or the Mrs hear it running before it was pulled from that Delta? Have you had the valve covers or intake off yet? Pull the covers and see what it looks like in there. If it's not too bad, pull the intake and look. If neither looks like an Olds version of the La Brea tar pits, keep going.

At the minimum I'd do the freeze plugs and a timing set. Maybe drop the oil pan, clean it and the pickup out and toss a fresh Melling pump in. Fresh gaskets are a good idea even if the pan didn't need to be cleaned out. Pull a rod cap and main cap and look at the bearings.

I'd be very tempted to put a cam in there. Something like a Comp XE256H. But that's the beginning of the slippery slope. If everything else was good up to that point do the cam. If you found something nasty along the way, you saved yourself the aggravation of the thing self destructing in the car on first fire-up.