Hey guys firstly, I have read till I'm crossed about 283s. I have to give back the 350 that's been in my car for three years. I have a choice of another 350 with 461 heads but somewhat low compression ratio, or a power pac 283. How do 283 really run? My car weighs 1995# has 3:50 gear and a 2.20 low gearbox. The rear tires are around 31 inches tall. I'm not really looking for a fueler motor but a healthy cruiser. The 350 is a dog down low due to age, lo compression, and a ridiculous 292 magnum Comp cam. The current engine has a 750 double pumper and point ignition with a pertronix module. Car starts and run good when it's warm, but flat as a pancake down low.... No surprise with the cam and CR. If I warmed up the 283, ie, 9-1 CR Mild cam, way smaller carb, how do you think it would move a 2000LBS modified? Thanks for reading and look forward to hearing opinions of people the really know 283s Merry Christmas everyone!
Should work just fine. Might could use a little more gear, if you don't spend a lot of time on the highway.
I've run that 292 comp cam, needs 10:1 minim compression and it does nothing below 3K. Its has enough duration to be a pain in the ass, bit not enough lift to really be a good race cam. I ran some good numbers with it, but it took a lot of tuning and a different cam with a little less duration and more lift made a big improvement. 283 will move that 2000 lb rig just fine. Get some 1.94 heads with small chambers and run a flat top or dished piston, deburr the valve reliefs, pushing the compression on a 283 benefit, but still be safe with available gas. Depends if you want to spend the money to deck the block or not on how you set up the pistons. 305 heads with 1.94 valves work well on 283's. I've never built one so my cam recommendations are off, there's multiple threads here discussing cam recommendations for 283's. Get a modern grind, the technology in cam grinding has come a long way since the factory 283 hi po grinds. 500-600 cfm vac or mech secondaries all depends on how you want to drive it, and how you cam it.
I love the 283 but it is a real pain with a 220 low gear and a 31" tire if you have much camshaft at all.
You mentioned several times that the 350 was flat down low, don't expect a 283 to be a stump puller. Where they shine is at high rpm's, they love to rev. The 1930 A pickup in my avatar weighs in at 2160#, the 283 moves it along quite nicely, even with a Powerglide trans, but again, not a lot goin' on down low.
leave the 283 stock. any performace mods will kill the low rpm torque. maybe add electronic iginition and a slightly bigger carb and hedders. your car is light enough. you have too tall rear gears. spend the engine mod money on some steeper gears.
My cabrio has a 283 with RV cam, 1405 Edelbrock carb, 350 turbo and it is plenty torquie. One of them will move your car every bit as fast as you need to go, with ease.
I ran a 63 301 punched 283,camel hump heads 30-30 duntov cam afb carb on steel manifold dual glasspack in a 63 biscayne turned 13.70 at U.S.-30 all day . A 283 will scoot your Hot-Rod fine Don in Indiana way back in the corn fields
Thanks for the info guys... I'm thinkin gears, I think I have a set of 3:90 gears to try. I'm gonna go way mild on the cam and I think a 600 Holley. I've always had 350s or 400s or big blocks. Most folks have said save my money and build a 350. I kinda dig the 283, and it looks right. The engine in the car is on loan and since I've had it I've removed a Offy cross ram that ran awful.... And I took out a humiliating Pete Jackson gear drive that was louder then the open exhaust. The 292 cam is part of the package and my buddy is pissed enough about his precious cross ram and gear drive, so I couldn't change the cam, or he would have removed my front teeth lol. Even if the 283 is flat down low it can't be worse than the bottom end of the 292 cam. Thanks for the replies.
Don... I'm out in the cornfields also, something about the air around the fields always makes a car run great! I live about 15 miles straight south of US 30 on Sunday mornings if it was humid out you could hear the fuel cars starting up. I never made it to see the races, unfortunately. Thanks for the info, my mentor and advisor is gone, dad had a 270-283 in a 57 Ranchero, he beat a 57 Chevy one night and the guy was ready to die. The guy was bitching "no ford ever beats my chevy!" Dad told him come over here pulled up the hood and showed him the two fours 283.... The dude was like " thank god.... Its a chevy motor!" Lol
Runs great.... After some jetting. Both carbs are hooked together, and they both had 51's and Mikes carbs chart showed all 283 had 55- 56 jets. I put 55's in it and it runs great! I really can't tell much of a difference from the old 350. It's responsive and pulls good. Haven't had it out to run it real hard yet, after working on the carbs Sunday morning, I had to do some work around the house. So far so good!
Nope it's all hewn from the natural aluminum. Pipe and plate and a little tig, and a bunch of filling and sanding. Thanks for the neato.
Here's the intake through it's transformation.... Some folks thought I'd lost my mind! But I had a plan.
the 283 is going to work great in that lite little car. Remember the cars that 283's came in back in the day I mean most of them weighed twice as much as your Hot Rod and they moved just fine. I do think I would think about a gear change. Nice job on the intake, that's thinking outside the box...
Here's a couple shots of the engine, it's a 1962 283 stock bore.... That was straight as an arrow. I put the pcv valve in the opening for the road draft tube, and with the 9 fin Cal Custom valve covers that have no holes, the intake for the crankcase is now in the front cover. I made a spud to weld to the timing cover and a breather that mimics a Moon style breather. I'm currently trying to figure out which pcv valve to run. The cam is an XE268H comp cam. It's kinda mild but so far it feels pretty good.... I'm just not used to having a really rough idle. It's choppy, but it sounds pretty mild. The last pic is of the timing indicator since the tab didn't fit the aluminum cover. I have a degree strip to put on the balancer.
back in the day if you bought a '55 chevy, first order of business was a junkyard 283. much, much nicer than the 265. if you had the long green, a 327, which would get that bel air sideways coming off the line...
Doing the valve job on the 520 Power Pac heads, with an old Black & Decker seat grinder. .020 of the surface and a little gasket match, and bowl work. I finished em off with .015 shim gaskets. Everybody says to use 305 heads... But the point is to optimize the vintage parts, and make to power it makes. I have to run a compression check to see how the C/R turned out.
So an update... I've been driving the car with the "new" 283. It runs ok, but there were some issues. To date, the Dan-O-Ram and the twin 2g Rochesters idled great, a big change from the old engine. When applying the power it also pulled good and ran pretty clean. The issue is with part throttle at cruise speed, it just kinda sputtered and puttered out of the exhaust. The car has is a stick shift, and has a torque arm that locates the rear end, if the the motor isn't running clean, it kinda bucks and rattles the torque arm. So it real apparent if it's not happy. I did a bunch of reading on twin carbs and 2gs in general and as always the Hamb is a great resource. The other source was CarbKing, his web site has a great tech page, and through reading I learned that the term"Idle Mixture Screws" is a misnomer. The mixture screws adjust mixture volume, not the fuel ratio. The idle fuel ratio is set by the small tubes the come down from the booster clusters. Second key piece is that once the idle screws are out a turn and a half that's it, that's all you get in regard to volume. This all made sense, kept screwing them out farther and no real change. So just to check my work I took the lids off the carbs. Lo and behold I had two different booster clusters.... Duh! So I went and took all my cores apart and found two that were identical down the the air bleeds. Then I picked 4 idle mixture tubes that matched and pressed them into the clusters. The last thing was to drill the tubes about .005 larger than stock. This would increase the idle fuel ratio, which also bridges into the main circuit, but has a huge input on part throttle drivability. This was all an experiment but a calculated risk, due to the fact I have a bunch of clusters ( as seen by the pic that looks like an alien spine) and I can " rejet" the idle side by simply removing the lids again. I also channeled my Dave " Littleman" spirit and filed the casting flash and polished the booster tubes seen in the second picture. All said and done the difference is very apparent, the exhaust note is clean, not fluttery, and the car doesn't buck or rattle the torque arm. The acceleration around town is snappy! Then after a full warm up, and a reset of the mixture screws and timing, and idle speed, I took it out of town to run thru the gears. Holy Shit! It goes, and like everyone one said it's a tad soft down low, but once the 283 get wound up, It pulls Hard! With the raised C/R it really sounds good up top. I've got one more thing to experiment with, a Mallory Distributer with only mechanical advance, which from reading appears to be advantageous with multi carb set ups. Thanks for reading this book, and thanks to everyone who has given me the encouragement to try twin carbs in a homemade intake!
Thanks Belair, I've never run a smallish small block, I'm used to 406/350ci stuff, so it's true what my Dad and all the Elders that speak highly of the, "toss that little old junk and get a 350", 283. Yeah it's down on cubes, but the car weighs 1995lbs! I'm impressed with the overall output of the little mill, and people light up when the ask "350?" Naw it's a '62 283!
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