My Dad (70 years old) was over here just last night flipping out about a 283 sitting in the corner of my garage under a pile of crap and overspray and was going on and on about how it's a '63 with a standard bore and probably has a forged crank and how he remembers how there were guys who were turing 10,000 rpm with these motors "back in the day" with these at which point I told him if it's so special then get it out of here (I even offered to load it in his truck)...............it's still here. Sometimes peoples romanticize about the old days and come up with a distorted sense of truth and history. 10,000rpm is crotch rocket territory, give me a freakin break 10,000rpm the thing would implode at 10,000 rpm
My late father had a 56 chevy in highschool, (graduated in '61). When he pulled the heads off the 283 to replace the gaskets, there were a couple different pistons used. Some with domes, some not, reliefs etc... His buddies always said his car had an unique sound, hmmm wonder why.
SORRY ... but 2.02 valves and 1.60 valves HIT the block on a stock bore 283. Your 283 must have been at least .030 or .060. over A set of camel hump heads with the 1.94 and 1.50 valves will clear the stock 3.875 bore. As a child of the 60's ... I know that a whole lot of the " 283's " running around were really 301/302 or even 327.
283 even sounds cool when some one asks what motor you got ANYONE CAN HAVE A CRATE 350/350 COMBO both my cars got 283
The 283 was king for a time, and really established the SBC. I street raced several 292s and 301s. You didn't need to be that much of a mechanic to get a solid lifter street engine to pull useable HP up into the 6500 - 6800 RPM range. They really responded to intake improvements. But remember we could pull into a Sunoco station and fill it up with a tank of 260 and had no issues running 10.5 - 11:5 CR on the street depending on the cam. No so today. So you should build and enjoy the 283 due to it's place in history, but you'll need to build it to run on today's gas. A 9.5:1 CR 283 will be a sweet thing - but it won't run anything like those "old school" ones did.
To get 10,000 RPM you needed solid lifters (hydralics would float the valves) also you had to double spring the points the stock points would bounce at 6500. There indeed where 10,000 RPM 283,s and there indeed where many that flew apart. A stock 283- 220 hp could often beat a 327-250 hp in a drag race. aganst a 300hp -327 it was a different story. the 57 283,s had flat top pistons without valve relief,s( eyebrows). I blew two of them colliding the valves with the pistons. I have a half dozen 283,s and a few 327,s that im hoarding at present . However the 283 in my 55 is coming out and a 454 is taking its place. OldWolf
Of all the parts I've sold off, I can't bring myself to sell my 283 chevy stuff...we had so much FUN with 283 through the years! The guys here on the HAMB who look down their noses at the "common, boring" chevy smallblocks must have never been playing with hotrods in the 50s and 60s......we WORSHIPED the lowly 283 chevy. It cost an arm and a leg to bore and stroke a smallblock 265-283 chevy and only the dedicated racers could afford to do it...we just ran with stock block/cranks but after trying to get 180-200 [!] hp from our flatheads the factory 220 HP 283 engines were very welcome and they were something else we needed....they were reliable. You had to really beat on a flathead to make it go and the little 283s would motor right on by at 6000 rpms, , making a sound that would stand the hair straight up on the back of your neck! ...and do it all day long. I can't count all the 55-57 chevs I've had with 283s...62-66 chevs with 283s and 327s and I've used 283-301s in many old fords and even a jeep wagon once! Always with manual transmissions [except for the blunder I made putting my super hot 301 wind-up motor in front of a 350 turbo in a heavy 53 ford pickup]. It's true, the shitty fuel we now have means low compression is the norm...about 10 to one is all we can run these days on the stinky "goat pee" they call gasoline but I still want to build a 301 [have all the parts] for my 57 Lloyd 2 door and a more sedate 0.080-over 283 [also have all the parts except cylinder heads] for my chopped and narrowed 36 ford pickup...
The 283 was made from a small block casting, there was nothing special about it. The fact that you could swap cranks and blocks around to get what you wanted was the "special" part. If I over simplify it a bit,......you could take a 283 block, drop a 327 crank in it and you'd have a 307; an engine Chevrolet put in pickups for the torque. You could take a 327 block, (same block, just bored bigger) and drop a 283 crank in it and you'd have a 302; a short stroke engine similar to what the first Z28's were equipped with, (I said "similar"). If you bored the little block out a little more you could end up with a 350. Very cool design. The 400 was a total different animal.
What i remember is the 30-30 cam was to big for the 283,097 or 098 solid lifter cams were great cams for the 265 & 283s.In the 60s i was stationed in Ca. and buildt a 283 out of a 265 and drove it home on leave with 4.11 gears in it.Ran 200 degrees the whole time,but made it to Missouri.I didnt have enough money to change gears for the trip,so ran what i had.
The 30-30 cam was too large for a stock 283, but with the larger 1.94 heads, and lower rear gears it sure wasn't too much. Worked great in mine with the larger heads, 4 spd., and 4.11 gears.
Part of the huge popularity was the fact you could go to the local Chevy dealer, buy a cam and lifters for nearly nothing, put a four barrell carb on it, and have a bad sounding engine that was super reliable. If you wanted to be double bad, you found a set of fuelie heads, and finned aluminum Corvette valve covers to go on it.
Sadly sometimes thats true . Actually it was my 265 powered 'Model A', that the blown Chrysler powered Dodge [or maybe Plymouth?] beat me, [I don,t think thats an embellishment]. Being a youngster of the 50's, my memory was, the biggest engine Chevrolet made in that decade was a 348. I,m sure I would have done better in that encounter if my 265 was built up to a 283. Which I bored out and assembled at the Jr. College auto shop in 1960.
Ha Ha,....I just had to quote you on that Mike,....I've been gettin' the conflicting information for forty-five years!!!! I guess hot-roddin' would be kinda dull if everyone had the same opinions!!
it seems like I'm getting some conflicting information when it comes to cams etc. Mike Thats because it is all about combinations. What gear in the car, the weight of the car, what kind of heads, what kind of carbs, and what you want the engine to do. One cam will not do it all.
....and keep in mind that this is 2011, not 1961, and that if you want to build a 283 like they did in '61, you'll be fueling it up at the local stock car track or dragstrip at prices that will make what you currently pay at the pumps look like a deal.
3 pages and I can't believe somebody hasn't mentioned there is no such engine. All the Ford small blocks are 90 degree motors, no 60 degree was ever built. The neat thing about both of these motors was the short stroke, that's where the high winding motors come from. Also why there's no torque. SPark
Man, I can't thank you guys enough for the stories, photos, and memories im drumming back up thanks to all your posts. I read each and every one of them. Old school stuff is so great and even though things have really changed over the years it's this stuff that gets me excited to wake up and work on cars. The 283 I had turned out to have a massive pit in one of the cylinders after I had it bored out .030 over. It was definitely a casting problem. I picked up a 327 block today and it was well taken care of so fate has sort of worked its magic I guess. It actually worked out good because I have a set of double hump 1.94s with new bronze guides and new seats. I've had them for 20 years but I kept them in good shape (oiled and bagged). Anyhow, this has turned into a great thread. Thanks again! Mike
I guess he'd be more mad if he knew the 327 came out in 62. Also the 66 L-79 was a 327-350hp 67 was rated at 325. The 350ci was available in 1967 but not in a Nova until 68. This reminds me of my buddy Don telling me about hunting "new" 327 and 409 Impalas at the repo lot. As he tells me you simply handed over the keys back then if you didn't make the payments.... He hoped to pick up a bigger mill for his coupe and swap the 283 he had in the body for a driver. What he found was all the 327's and 409's were already stolen swapped out for junk 265 and 283s and the cars returned.
Hers's my old 283, it was destined for an upright Ford Pop (Anglia)........circumstances, life etc meant I never got it finished sold the lot inc car for $100.............. .
I had great ideas (for a 18 year old) that were never thought through .......i bought the inlet manifold ...........but couldn't afford the carbs..............! .
This is the car it was destined for...................you can just see the original rocker covers that i had chromed......................there the only thing i have left.. .
This will bring a tear to your eyes. In 1962 I had a friend who was the parts manager at Tropical Chevrolt in Miami so I got everything at cost plus 10%. New 327/340 short block - $220, 098 Duntov $20, Corvette valve covers $10. I had a 301 {283 + 1/8} in my 57 Vette that won 48 straight features at Hialeah Speedway in a late model modified. We took the stock car cam out and put a $20 Mellings cam in and it was a rocket ship with a 4 speed & 4.56 gears. The pistons sounded like they were swapping holes when it idled. The Vette weighed 2650 so do the math, it was deadly to any late model car in S Fla at the time. All we had for tires back then was Atlas Bucrons or Ives cheater slick recaps so we raced from a slow roll. It was fun then, the cops would even let you off with a warning. Those days are over !
Well it definitely has power pack heads on it. If you take a picture from a different angle of the front of the block there is a dead give-away if it is a early or late style block. Someone mentioned that you can't tell the difference between a 283 and a 350 or 400, but Looking at the front of the block it is very easy to tell without bending over or breaking a sweat.
'Bout time we had a thread like this. It's almost an exact duplicate of about a couple dozen or so since I've joined. It's full of 1/2 truths, speculation, and out and out lies interspersed with some facts. I especially like information from "back in the day" (1998). Built my first flathead in 1958 (two years before I got my license in 1960). Built my first SBC a year later and have spent my life building and racing big and small block Chevys in drag, oval track and on the street. I actually owned and operated a high performance engine building shop in the late 70's early 80's. Since I turned 67 yesterday I find it comforting to have the HAMB available to clarify all of the misinformation I've deluded myself with all of those years. Rock on racers!!!! Frank
ok guys, i am running a real 61 283 in my 61 impala, it a little hops up, and runs strong for a big car with 373 gears, but i would take a 350 ,or better yet a 409 over it, one day maybe
Nostalgia is just another way of saying 'legend'. It doesn't take a genius to figure out that tall tales from the past have some basis in reality and like all good stories and some old men, have gained weight with the passage of time. No matter, some of us still build and run early Chevy engines, not to relive the past but to use and enjoy the benefits that derive from small displacement engines that rev fast, are powerful, and coupled with manual transmissions make light weight vehicles fun to drive. And, early Chevy engines can be made even more responsive with high tech contributions such as better pistons, rings, bearings, and cam profiles, heads and head work, valves and fuel delivery systems, including intakes and carburetors. Even HEI distributors with aftermarket additions are a drop in. The availability of parts is staggering, including dress up items that are period correct but were in short supply back in the day. And, not to mention new castings of older style manifolds and headers of all flavors. When threads like this come along, I enjoy the pros and cons that are thrown out --- and like all campfire tales realize that sifting through the ashes in the morning reveals some stuff that even a good hot fire won't digest. But, so what? It's the zeal that counts, and the tales, true or not, are entertaining because they are about something we all have experienced in some form, or the other, good, bad, or indifferent. Tech, on the other hand, is not something you get by bench racing. It comes from the doing, the building, the controlled experiments, and the resulting successes and failures. That part is clinical and lacks the same smell as old-fashioned baloney. And, even if there is always going to be a sour puss or two to remind us that all that glitters is not gold, and our fly is unzipped, and so on, nothing beats a good bull session. Thanks guys. Long story short, I had a Fifty-Five Chevy in Sixty One with a 301. A lot of what I've read reminds me of my own trials and tribulations. And, like of guys who have moved on, I wish I knew then what I know now.
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