350 engine upgrades

[chevynut]

I have a 350 2 barrel engine with 100,000 miles on it in a 1970 impala. This is the origional engine. It burns no oil and runs good. I am fairly new to this hobby and would like some advice as to what I should do with this engine. What are some of the basic mods I should be looking at? I am not looking at anything radical, maybe a 4bbl carb and intake manifold and possibly headers.
It has dual exhaust with glass packs. Basically, what I am asking is that on a limited budget, what are some of the things that will give me the best bang for my buck? I am planning on using this car as my weekend sunny day cruiser.

[Twitch]

Yeah the headers, intake and performance carb are low budget and will not accelerate the wear on your engine unless you stand on it a lot more. Those thing will give the best return on the dollar.

[chevynut]

Twitch: Thanks for the advice. As a novice, I find the wide variety of intakes and carbs
(even headers) a little confusing. Any suggestions?

[Billy Clanton]

Howdy
Well for the SBC 350, Edelbrock offers a good combo carb & intake that is basically a bolt-on & re-tune setup. Ya gotta pull the distributor, so ya better know what you are doing or you can put it in 180 out. With 100,000+ added carbs might loosen up and blow yer rings out. I did that on a Hi-Miler 400 Mopar some years back. It was a 2 bbl, I converted it to a 4bbl Holley and it lit that sucker right up! About 4 months later, I had a rod start tapping and she started smokin.
You can get a lotta performance outa a stock 350 with headwork and a medium cam. We did a 1981 ElCamino 305 a few years ago, with a mid-range cam, and some re-worked heads, carb & alum. manifold & headers, and that little sucker ran great. Theres so many ways you can go with a 350 that its unbelieveable. And yours being a stock 1970 that means you got a 4-bolt main which is the better of the 350's.
Good luck with it and welcome to the world of hot roddin'
Billy

[Oldcar_Mechanic]

If you're not having any problems with the engine and it has 100,000 miles on it, why would you want to do anything to it now. I would look around and learn all you can about making it high performance and when it gets really tired, then do the entire engine. That way you'll have something that is reliable. The 350 is a great engine and should perform quite well for your "weekend sunny day cruiser"

Best of luck with the car
Ron

[COCACOLA_JUNKY]

Another mod u can do if u have a set of 350 heads sittin around is swap the 305 heads off with the 350 heads it will up ur compression to about 11:1. but i would check cause if much more then that u will need to run premium fuel and that could be a pretty penny to keep fuel in it...
Del Gerlinsky