has anyone ever thought of rebuilding a chevy V8 engine and putting it in their monte? a buddy of mine told me that i should try and get my hands on a 350, rebuild it, and put it in my monte. i know a lot of work is needed, but i am really wondering how it will sit/mount in the engine bay. obviously things will need to be moved around, and i am 99% sure i would have to drill new holes in the frame to mount it. but i am just wondering what others have to say.

 

what kind of tranny would you plan on using? I think mating it to a transaxle would be the biggest challenge for this kind of swap.

And yes, I'm sure you would have to do some extreme fabrication to get the thing to mount in the engine bay.

 

thats why i am seeing if anyone has thought about this yet. i want to see what i am getting myself into lol

 

Well, to put a normal 350 small block in a Monte... I'd say it would be just as easy to make it RWD. Keeping it FWD would not only be extremely expensive and difficult, but it may be near impossible without all the parts in the setup being a "one-off" deal. That means $$$$

 

Some of the questions above are important- which tranny would you use, and would you keep it FWD or RWD?

IMO, an old carb'd 350 wouldn't be worth wasting your time. After doing some looking around, it seems that most ranged from 200-300 crank horsepower (those at the upper end seemed to be rated in the old power rating system and would be much lower now). Those power levels are easily achievable on a boosted 3400 or L67- and more.

If you would go through all the work of doing it (its way more than just drilling new holes- you're talking about a lot of custom fabrication), you may as well go LS4 if you stay FWD (its the fwd 5.3L V8 out of the new monte SS's and such) or an LS1/LS2 if you go RWD (or heck, even a hardcore big block if you really want a carb'd setup).

No sense in doing all that work to end up with a car that isn't that much faster in the end.