Anyone have any specs on a 283 built to drag. I live for this stuff.

Sure, just pick up any Hot Rod type magazine from the early to mid '60's and you'll find plenty of hot 301 cube (1/8" overbore) 283's. The hottest ones were found in Jr. Fuel injected nitro dragsters, running in the 7's at 170+ mph 1/4 miles. Of course when your total dragster weight was only ~ 900 or so lbs and the tank had high 90% pop, all you need is lotsa rpm out of a short 3" stroke engine.

For a hot door slammer rpms were also the goal. Solid flat tappet camshaft, a four gear, and 5.13 gears will move even a full weight car quickly off the line (and break a lot of parts in the process).

Thomas

A guy at work used to have a 38 Ford that he stuck a 270 HP 2X4 283 in.... A homemade set of headers a BW T-10 an Olds rear end with 5.86 gears....And go street racin...Circa 1962 in that era.He was always good with a clutch and with all that gear he would holeshot most anyone....He would have 4 car lengths on them so fast that everyone just shut down and gave up....... He said the holeshot just killed them.... He further said that due to the gearing it had no top end and he the people he raced would have actually stayed into the race they would have shot him down !LOL....

Around the same time one of our old managers who is now retired was involved in a dragster with a SBC in it....serious piece for the day...had 66 !! degrees in the magneto... He said that the more lead they put in it the more power it made..... till one day it decided to let go..... Blew the crank out onto the ground....broke the block so bad that when they picked up part of the crank off the ground one of the main journals still had the main cap bolted to a blown off piece of main webbing !!
He said his ears rang for a week afterwards from the ear splitting KABOOM that it made when it let loose.

Back in High School we raced a wicked 292 :eek: in a boat of a 58 Impala, T-10, 5.13's, ran high 12's,
and broke a lot of axles graemlins/clonk.gif

Later raced a 65 Chevelle NHRA Super Stocker,
283 w/glide, started in SS/PA, ended up in SS/MA
with the National Record @ 11.86, had way too much fun graemlins/beers.gif , met some great people graemlins/waving.gif , and gain a lot of knowledge and respect for the "Old School" competitors graemlins/thumbsup.gif

I have several 283's that I've played with over the years. One in particular I had in a '50's Willys Pickup, .030 over forged flatties, 305 heads with 1.94's, solid 290+ .488 cam (don't remember exactly), 500cfm Carter, and some small tube headders. This particular lil pickup had 5:13 gears, and loved the RPM's. I was allways breaking something. The 283 I put in the Chevelle to drive it around while I was building the BB has a fairly stock rotating assy with early "Pwr-Pack" heads (which is prob the greatest limiting factor), and a Q-jet. With 4:11's I could still walk my buddies new GM truck on the freeway. :D

Ok two of guys have mentioned breaking lots of parts with the high winding 283's, how come?

With me it's the fact that early Willy's running gear was never designed for V8 power of any sort. And it was just plain fun to wind the dog-water out of the lil 283 and side-step the clutch :D

Back in the day when the 283 was the SBC to have these engines basically had either PowerGlides or T-10's or BW 3 speeds behind them...The early Chevy third members (prior to the familiar 10 and 12 bolts ) were not a strong as the later 10 and 12 bolts.....It was fairly common to break spider gears and axles with those old rear ends....And since 283's loved to rev people often put lots of gear behind them...this led to people exceding the RPM that stock cast iron flywheels were ever meant to deal with....Clutch / flywheel explosions , broken U joints ,ect were common..... This actually led to stronger parts becoming available....As by 1964 or so GM , Mopar and Ford had developed The Muncie , New Process and TopLoader 4 speeds as well as the 12 bolt , 9 in and the use of Dana 60's....The also really got heavier use of Nodular Iron Flywheels instead of Grey Cast Iron on the HP combos...this lead to better clutches ....The Aftermarket got involved with all this stuff also....Hurst really started to get involved with real shifters VS the leass than desireable Inland Steel ... OE Muncie / Mopar units..... Scatter Shields became necessary....

When people started to really develope some serious power with them by useing Superchargers and Bore/Stroking and injected Alky/Nitro Chevy started to really take notice and by 1968 they made the large journal 4 bolt main engines with larger dia rod bolts ect ect....as it became obvious that the power levels being produced was beginning to excede what these engines were designed for.

The first engine I built was a 283. I didn't know any better at the time. It had 11:1 pistons, 69 Z-28 heads and a big solid flat tappet cam. I put it in a 70 chevelle that had 2.56 gears and a turbo 350. As you can imagine it was aweful from a dead stop. It didn't have a tach in it (at first), so I didn't know how the tight the engine was turning. The first time I got on it hard it came on the cam around 40 mph in first and was still making power at 90 (still in first), it would bury the 120 mph speedo in second gear. I had alot of fun with it, but I learned that there is no subsitute for cubic inches and my next motor was a 454.

A good friend of mine had a late 60's Duece with a .030 over 283 with a wide ratio muncie and 3.73's that was a hell of alot of fun! 5.0 mustangs, 80's camaros, etc. weren't any problem on the street

So Cool. Great stuff. One day i want to build a 283 like those. After reading these posts its gonna be hard to wait.

ok, these are all stories of high winding 283s that were fast and fun.

I had a high school buddy that had an old 65 Impala sedan with a 283/glide. it was old,rusty,heavy,and slow. used an enormous amount of oil, and seemed to always be full of empty beer cans :D

that's the only 283 story I have. graemlins/waving.gif

If you are a hardcore 283 freak, then you need to listen to the song "Hot stocker" by Jan and Dean. :cool:

Back when I was growing up a buddy of mine and I had an Idea to build a race car. I had a very nice 66 300 Deluxe Malibu wuth no engine or trans he had a 12 bolt with 4:88 gears and nothing to put it in. We bought a used TH400 with a manual valve body,shifter and 4000 stall converter for $150, put some slicks on a set of 15X8 ralleys, racing bucket,scrounged some gauges.Now all we needed was an engine. I worked part time at my uncles Trucking comapny , he was a huge hot rodder so he said he had an engine I could have. It was a 1962 283 from his shop truck, it had been removed years ago for smoking and was under a workbench and being used by the shop dog as a latrine graemlins/thumbsup.gif graemlins/thumbsup.gif (lol). We drug this engine out steam cleaned it oiled it down and went to work. I had a set of 194 fuelie heads we put on it, got a Cam Dyanamics cam as big as we could (didnt know much at 16yrs old) and a weiand high rise intake and holley 750 dp carb (also donated by my uncle). we got it installed in the car (mind you we never pulled main or rod caps or checked anything) everyone gathered around to watch us fire it up sure it would smoke and come apart before their eyes. We fired her up on the first try and ran her at 2500 rpm to break in the cam (what an awsome roar that little motor made)after that she was shut down we checked it over and refired it bam! she fired right up no smoke good oil pressure I was in heaven. We took her out on the road inside the industrial park for her first flog WOW! that little 283 really screamed it was quite a trill for 2 16 year old kids with their new toy, after flogging her a bunch we went back to the shop and parked her, over the next 3 weeks we prepped her for her first trip to the track we installed some more scrounged parts (most supplied bty my uncles hot rodder buddies who hung around his shop) An accel super coil and plug wires, 5 point seat belts, driveshaft loop and a line lock. on a friday night we loaded her on an equipment trailer and headed to ATCO new jersey to see what she would do. My uncle and his buddies came along to help us tune her in. the first pass was dismal 14.50 sputtering all the way down the 1/4 mile, but when we got her to the pits we found a loose wire on the coil as the culprit. By the end of the night with some serious tuning and trial and error driving the little mouse that could went a best of 12.64 at 109 mph shifting the 400 at 7200 rpm. we were so happy that night and it proved to be a great learning experience for all and a lot of fun. I ran the car with the 283 for about a year putting many passes on it but never surpassing the 12.64 we got that night, later we got a 454 (from uncles work truck) and retired the 283 I gave it to a friend who put it in a 68 chevelle ran it till it finally died. Well sorry for the long post ,but that experience created a special place in my heart for the 283, I have one sitting in the garage and it is going to be the first engine my son and I rebuild and install in his chevelle. I hope no one ever forgets these awsome little motors or their place in hot rod history.

this topic makes me want to work my 283 over.....

[QUOTE] [ Well sorry for the long post ,but that experience created a special place in my heart for the 283, I have one sitting in the garage and it is going to be the first engine my son and I rebuild and install in his chevelle. I hope no one ever forgets these awsome little motors or their place in hot rod history./QUOTE]

Glad to hear someone else is doing a father/son buildup. My 13year old son has 70 Nova SS/4speed/twelve bolt, we are building a 66 smalljournal 327 for. Small solid cam, h-beam rods, torker 2, 650double pumper. Can't wait to fire it up! He's been working on it as money and time permits, in three years it should be an awesome car. graemlins/thumbsup.gif

Originally posted by bored&stroked:
Ok two of guys have mentioned breaking lots of parts with the high winding 283's, how come? My Camaro originally ran in Super Stock as an SS/CS car. It had a 283 then later a 296. Ran with a converted Doug Nash 5-speed (with 5th locked out) and a Ford 9" with 6.50 pro gears.

Left the line at 8,000 RPM and shifted at 11,000 RPM.

Car has a removable tunnel to make changing the transmission easier...

Of coarse you only needed to change the transmission when the rear end did not break...

Not much forgiveness at those RPM's in a "heavy" and full bodied car.

Lot's of fun though...

A friend of mine, told me, that back in the 70's him and a couple of his buddys, had a 56 Chevy four door with a 283, and 5:13 gears that ran 12's in a Super Stock class.

Anyway, the car was called "Hitlers Mother" and had a cartoon of an old lady with a German flat top helmet, giving you the middle finger.

He still goes on about how much he likes those little mouse engines.

A typical quote would be: "All these guys think the've got something hot, with their big blocks, but we were runnin 12s with a little 30 over 283" back in the70s man."

I have a soon to be retired 282 in a 66 wagon I bought 5 years or so ago. I drove it with a rattle in the bottom end some where, the 200++ miles home like that no troubles. I then had my dad drive it to his place 140 miles then stored and started maybe twice a year since then. He put a battery charger on it last night and a shot of ether and a few pumps and she ran. Hopped in it today to drive it back here the 140 miles but about 1/2 way the water pump seazed up and had to have it towed the rest. The OD shows well over 100,000. Not quite the same as running twelves or shifting at 10,000 just wild that it has run and probably not taken care of all this time. Soon it will be pulled in favor of my 408 mouse build up.

Lets hear more 283 stories. graemlins/beers.gif

I finally got my nephew's unknown origin medium journal, forged crank, 283 with a set of good big valve -291's on it and one of these day's I'm liable to buy a '64 Duece and put it in it along with a four speed and a good low-geared rearend AND go big motor hunting!!

pdq67

PS., I honestly figure that it is built from a new, over the counter 307 block and a '68/'69 Z-28 crank!! But it has stock, cast-aluminum four valve notch pistons it that from the look of them AND the rods are basically new too???? As are the -291 heads so go figure..

An old duece with a high winding smallblock, 4speed, and tall gears. Now that's cool in my opinion. Add some grey primer and cutout rear wheelwells with slicks hangin out and I'd have to say it would be Perfect!

Bought a '67 Malibu back in '75 when I was 15 years old for $395. 3 on the tree, 283 2 bbl.
I yanked the motor, moved shifter to the floor (kept 3 spd.). Rebuilt that engine on the garage floor with J.C. Whitney parts. Same pistons, crank. Valve job on heads. Mild cam. Used Holly 650 dbl pmpr on the stock intake. That motor cranked right up and provided me with a fine little 200HP screamer for approx. 2 years, when I sold it to a buddy of mine. A few years later, the car was sitting in a field rotting away after he blew the engine. A sad end to a great car graemlins/sad.gif

Ok my one 283 story from a couple years ago:

My auto teacher was a chevy nut with too much money. He had over 40 cars, his own air field, airplanes etc. He wanted to do somthing fun in class one day, so he decided to show what running a motor with no oil causes. Took a tired old 283 we had sitting around, set up a motor stand and camcorder, drained the oil, stated the sucker up and set it to WOT and ran away! If you slow the video down you can see as he turns to run away the motor blows the #5 connection rod out the side of the block and about 4" from his head as it rocketed out and away. Motor continued to run at WOT for another 45 seconds, pretty good if you aks me.