I have a 1984 K5 blazer (that i call brutus) i bought from my cousin for 900 bucks. It had a blown engine but otherwise was in fairly good shape. i started looking for an engine but got laid off so it has sat in my garage for 9 months.

I now have gotten the engine pulled out and the block is done for. 2 pistons were blown apart with two others cracking, one of the connecting rods was bent 90 degrees. So its junked sitting in my garage for now.

I just bought a 400 small block for $350. it will be getting a new towing cam and lifters, double roller timing chain, rocker arms, rods and new gaskets. it also has 305 heads on it.

pics to be posted soon.

 

Sounds like a pretty good deal.

Get yourself a set of the newer Vortec heads and an intake that will bolt up to them!

 

I've been running a 400 for about 5 years. Great engine

 

400s are nice torque motors, buddy of mine has one in a '74 k10 (4x4 shortbed) with 8 lug axles swapped on. Nice strong motor..

 

Man just saw this thread... looks like it could be beastly!

 

that 400 is gonna be right @ home in that K5 of yours.

 

Ok I have pics to post but I'm having trouble posting them. Gonna try again tomorrow... yesterday I started degreasing the engine bay so I can give it a new coat of paint and I also painted the battery tray but I didn't do anything today because it snowed (in Ohio).

I'm gonna tear down the 400 smallblock this weekend. I've been reading on the 400s and seen there is alot of talk about overheating if you switch heads or dont run high enough rpms does anyone know about overheating problems?

 

400's definitely can have heat issues. It stems from the fact that the cylinder walls are siamesed. To give sufficient wall thickness around the cylinder bores, the walls connect between each set of pistons where other small blocks have water jackets that flow between the cylinder bores improving thermal transfer and reducing hot spots that can cause flash boiling of the coolant.

 

Ok so I've been busy lately so I haven't added any updates.

I got the 400 stripped down and it's going to the machine shop to get cleaned up line bored and honed. I also am getting steam holes drilled into the heads since they are not 400 heads. Next stop is summit so I can drop some money lol. I'm having trouble uploading pics is there something I'm doing wrong?

 

try using photobucket.

worked wonders for me (and many others on here).