Heads/Block I.D.?

[Tonka]

I only just now tried to I.D. what heads were on my 77K15. Full frame off resto and I assumed all along the engine was weak. However, whoever owned this truck prior took the time to swap the front end out for a D44, installed long tube headers, Torker intake manifold and Holley 4 barrel.  Figuring it was worth a shot to see what the casting numbers revealed and lo and behold I may have the sought after 041's. As I can see it the numbers read 3347041 with cast date of 3-4-0 Which I believe means March 3rd 1970.

The 041 heads seem to have quite the fan club. Are these what I have? What vehicle, if so, would they have likely come out of? What size valves are on it? Is there any way to tell without removing the heads?

The engine block says 14016379. Would that be the original block? Would someone put 041 heads on an already anemic 170 horsepower motor?



Thanks for any help you have on this.

[Captkaos]

Those are 1968-70 3947014 heads they had 1.94 intake and 1.5 exhaust.  Ideally you would need hardened seats in them for performance use.  For the money you can find better heads in my opinion.


The block 14016379 is 1978-85 350 car or truck motor.

[Tonka]

Thank you CaptKaos!  How much of an improvement over the '78 factory heads would these have been? I read somewhere that these heads also came 2.02, any truth to that?

As for the bock, is the 78 350 a worthy block to rebuild on? What separates certain years of small blocks (good and bad)?


Thank you again sir!

[Captkaos]

Those heads would increase compression due to the 64cc chambers.  They never had 2.02's in them.
As far as engine blocks, for street or strip use there is nothing that sets any SBC block apart from any other.  I prefer 2 bolt mains over 4 bolt mains.

[Tonka]

Thank you Kaos. You are the first person to tell me you prefer 2 bolt mains over the 4 bolt. Why is that? So the 350CI block itself remained unchanged up to this point ('77)?

What would the HP have been for this engine originally? I know the HP numbers were low but were those numbers accurate? Why were they so low? Was it just compression ratio that did them in? Is there a website I could go to that goes into detail on small block GM's from this era (wiki has some info but no horsepower figures)

Thanks again!

[Tonka]

This is probably another stupid question but did the GMC trucks get the exact same blocks/engines as their chevrolet counterparts?
Anything at all different between GMC's and Chevy's beside badging?

[Greybeard]

Hi Tonka,
 i believe, but may be wrong, that your front axle is stock. They only put D44's in up to 78 or 79. The wimpy 10 bolt didn't show till then.

[Tonka]

Thanks Greybeard!

 This truck like all of yours I'm sure, is a big mystery. Just trying to piece together the history on it. The 3.73's and posi rear had me wondering. Then add in the long tube headers, torker intake and holley carb and I get suspicious as to what the previous owners did to it.
Guy I bought it off of was a bricklayer who towed a small work trailer behind it for 10 years. When we pulled the rear drums nothing but beach sand and sticks and a rusted rotted out wheel cylinder. Brakes were completely inop.

But why would a guy this negligent go through the trouble of sourcing high flow iron heads for his work truck? Was the bottom end rebuilt? Was it to OEM specs? What kind of compression ratio could I expect with these high compression heads and say slight more aggressive pistons? What about the camshaft?
Like I said it's a mystery!

[Greybeard]

Well, When you get real curious and really ambitious you could drop the pan and look at the lower end. Just be certain you are comfortable with the rear seal placement. It's not hard but has to be done right.

Long tube headers where normal. I couldn't even tell you what a short tube is because I've never used a set on an old GM product. Or maybe I've never used a long tube...   I have Hooker Comps on this one...I'm thinking the short tubes are the ones that point pretty much straight down and the collector is in roughly the stock position? I've been away from old trucks for way too long...

As for why that guy would do what he did? Who knows?

The 3.73's will work fine with up to 33 inch tires, if you don't care about getting off the line very fast up to about 35's but I doubt I'd try anything larger than that. There was ratio split in the 12 bolt housings anyway, I don't remember where it was. Maybe between 3.73 and 4.10/4.11?

Those heads are not really high flow heads, they reduce the compression chamber volume. That helps with the compression ratio, which, at this point is probably a non issue. These other guys are the real pro's these days. Like I said, my main experience was from twenty plus years ago when a '78 was only five years old. Things have matured and changed a lot I think. Procedures and parts have been refined down to what really works as opposed to theory. Four wheeling was in it's infancy when I started playing off-road living in St. Louis back in the early '70's. Big Foot was still a dream and the biggest truck wore 29"-30" tires. Then Bob Chandler built the first Bigfoot for his own use, it wore farm tires in the 35" range. At that time I had a buddy that had a FJ. We got stuck in a field east of the Mississippi between the canal and the river one day playing some rutted two track. We walked out to and hitched a ride to the truck stop and he called his neighbor...it was Bob Chandler, he came out with (at the time) the most awesome and biggest Ford F-250 I had ever seen. He just drove right up to us we hooked up to his winch, he couldn't get enough bite to keep himself still so he chained up to a tree and winched us out. No such thing at the time as snatch straps either. Then he drug us out of there. After that, every once in a while we would spend the 4th of July week with the crew of Bigfoot and FirstBlood, and some others that never made it big down in Lesterville Mo on the Black River playing in the water. Midwest four wheel drive was THE place to buy truck parts for while until about 1988 or so, I don't know for sure because I had moved out of the state in 85.

Things change. New and improved trucks can't hold a candle to the trucks of the 70's. ANY truck of the 70's. Even my 78 Scout II was a good truck. A nightmare to figure out parts for. But with two D44's and mine had the 345 engine with t400 and a dana transfer case (don't remember which model) it was pretty stout in it's own right. Had about as much power as a tricycle however. My brother sold me his 77 Bronco with a 302 and a three speed, but I only owned it for about three months so I didn't do much work on it. Point that little beast at something and hold on, it made it to the top of a frozen pile of snow in the grocery parking lot, about 12 feet up. It never made it down though.    Took three other trucks to pull me out... 
Anyway...I digress. Had a lot of fun... broke a lot of parts, trial and error found parts that would work. Everyone thought I was nuts trying to swap a 14 bolt into a swb GMC. I had read about it in a four wheel drive magazine in the early eighties, Granville King I think mentioned it in a story. Not sayin I was close to the first, but I was in my circle of four wheelin friends. My brother swapped a 426 Cobra jet into his 78 F-250 with divorced t-case. But then he was playing road racer and rolled it, walked away and hid buddy called his sister to come get them, went home and got the buddy's car (Cougar with 351 Cleveland) and they wrecked that on they way back to the truck wreck. Yes..they were really drunk...back when driving drunk was only frowned upon and a person wasn't treated like some sort of deranged criminal like they are today.

anyway, good luck ferreting out what you have. Don't dismiss anythiong you have as sub par. I also owned a 74 Monte Carlo with a factory 454 and T400. It was real dog when I bought it. it could barely outrun it's shadow. I would guess high 18's @ maybe 70mph in the quarter. Then a simple recurve of the distributor, some TLC to the quadrajet, tighten up the shift down linkage and good modulator, add some Hooker headers and header mufflers and it ran best times in the high (very high) 14's. Like 14.98@ just over a hundred. it used 4.10 gears in 12 bolt posi car rear end. I was using Big-O tires ..can't remember the tire size but they barely fit under fenders without scuffing on the stock 8" wide rally wheels. Wide tires. I still couldn't hook up with it though. 4500lbs that car weighed. But I got drunk one night and wrapped it around a Sycamore trunk, tore the left rear axle out and bent the frame. Live and learn.

Crap, I get to rambling and I don't stop...sorry.    Just old age I guess.

Life was much better back then, we could have fun and take risks; it wasn't the sterilized, be safe, don't do that you might break a fingernail or harm a snail, effeminate society it's turned into.

[Tonka]

Greybeard by all means keep going! These stories are pure gold. I grew up in the 80's. Bigfoot, USA 1, Grave Digger, Chi-Town Hustler I remember them all! Went to several Monster Truck rallies even one when they were still doing mud bogs AND car crushes. The good old days for sure. I grew up in a family of wrench turners, Nascar fans and horse traders. North Carolina doesn't quite have the Monster Truck history the Midwest has. To of seen that in it's infancy must have been amazing. I remember being 17 years old and this Monster beast of a truck was for sale in my town. It was an early Suburban chassis on 37" super swampers with a camouflage painted station wagon body mounted on it. Glass packs and headers.
They wanted a grand.
I saved up a grand and then took my mom and stepfather over to see what I was fussing about. Absolutely vehemently NO. Was the answer. I said I'd park it in the woods two blocks away. Still no. I regret that to this day.
but I digress. I get to rambling in my old age…

Thank you for sharing your knowledge. I appreciate all of it. My 77 350, as I know it, has 041 heads, 4 bolt main, Hooker Ceramic Coated headers, MSD ignition, blaster coil, gear driven timing, holley 600 and Torker manifold. Here's hoping she roars like a beast when I get her running again.

[Greybeard]

IDK Tonka, it seems you have a good starting point already. It also sounds like those parts should do well together. The heads are almost always the bottleneck. Almost always. All head with one part number are not necessarily created equal. Back in the day I saw a guy that had a set of double humps that had so much casting flash left inside it was a wonder the engine ran at all.

There was the axiom once that said to look closely at the manufacturing date, Don't buy a vehicle made between Thursday and Tuesday. 

Back in those days in the St. Louis area there a lot of places to play off road that were not illegal. Like under viaducts, some county parks, or a lot of simple open space or abandoned material sites. Not today, liability has closed everything down and it's not the landowners fault. It's our fault. Landowners were tired of being sued when someone trespassed and then got hurt on their property and sued them. Or trespassed and tore the property up so bad it cost a fortune to reclaim it or clean it up. One of the reason's I quite four wheeling is because the areas available to four wheel on have disappeared for the most part, at least here in the populated Midwest. There's many reason's besides liability however, damage is high on the list, as is throwing trash and not cleaning up after themselves. One of the many reason's why the Black River in MO was closed is because of a small fish only spawned in that area, but this wasn't the entire reason, the other reason's were folks were draining their oil in the gravel, not carrying their trash out after a week of camping, and folks getting drunk and killing other folks. When we started camping on the Black over the labor day, the 4th week, and Memorial weekends, there were maybe a hundred others camped out with us, that was in the early seventies when I was still in junior high school, by the mid eighties when they closed the river to vehicular traffic there were thousands camping there. 10,000 the last year I went (1986 I believe) Drunken drivers killed three people that week driving over their tents at night. Now don't get me wrong, with ten thousand drunks driving that is an acceptable number as far as I'm concerned. I blame it on stupid folks camping in well traveled areas. Should have known better. There were very well used trails in the gravel and these folks decided that this open area was good spot. And when I say drunk, that doesn't mean everyone was plastered all the time; drunk as in medium drunk after a good night on the town as a twenty-something. I have videos of the last year I went on the 4th. I drove back from Colorado in my 78 GMC with my Yamaha 225 DX three wheeler (the yellow one, not the blue one  )in the bed just to play.   


But I'm rambling again. Now I own a farm in Iowa, how things change!
 

[Captkaos]

About 160hp stock.  Due to the can and compression.  They were built to pull not race so torque was the requirement.

The 10 bolt and Dana 44 are equal in strength.  90% of parts swap.  GM based their 10B on the D44.  They just started making instead of sourcing.

Chris Lucas
73-87chevytrucks.com
captkaoscustoms.com
squarebody.biz

[Tonka]

Thanks for sharing your knowledge Cap'n. So what kind of torque was GM purporting this engine to make? 160 HP is… sorry to say… sad, pathetic, and not gonna work! Those big 35" meats need a lot more than that to work for me. I may be sh*t canning this engine sooner than later!

[rich weyand]

With proper tune (i.e. losing all the pollution control nonsense and tuning it properly, with headers and a good intake manifold) the stock engine is good for 260 hp and 350 lbft.  In emissions trim as sold in 1977, it produced 175 hp and 275 lbft.

[Tonka]

With proper tune (i.e. losing all the pollution control nonsense and tuning it properly, with headers and a good intake manifold) the stock engine is good for 260 hp and 350 lbft.  In emissions trim as sold in 1977, it produced 175 hp and 275 lbft.

Thank you Rich! I had a hard time believing that 350 cubic inches of solid american iron could be so pathetic! Good to hear.