Thread: 1988 TBI 454 Questions. Please and Thank Ya.

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I recently bought a bone-stock 88 C3500 454 with 130k on the odometer. I want to make this a really peppy street truck. Something I can beat 4.6 GT's with. Something competetive with all the new trucks. It'll get a good chunk of highway useage so changing the tranny out to be able to go 70 down the highway without this thing sounding like a B-52 would be nice.
Ive got several questions, some of them simple, some of them will require a little more...opinionated an answer. So...herre we go..

1. Engine being bone-stock, can I throw a 700R4 behind it for a little while without having catastrophic failure?

2. Is it a good idea to keep my TBI setup, or should I go with a carb set up? The nice TBI stuff gets very exensive for what youre gaining.

3. I've already made up my mind to take the 4.10 out and throw in a 3.73 but, if I do the 700r swap am I compromising the "truck" at all?

Thanks guys. I wouldnt say Im new to this but, I've worked on 350 TBI engines my whole life..never touched a TBI 454.

you bought the wrong truck for what you want.. the 454 of that era is a giant turd with a tiny cam and low compression. it should however have a 4bbl manifold but use a TBI adapter for the TBI.. the TBI will not support a decent cam. you need diffrent heads, diffrent cam, a quadrajet would bolt right on and that is your best bet for induction. but by the time you do all that, it still isn't going to be much.. you will be farther ahead with a 350 powered 3/4 ton, Vortech heads, 4bbl carb, headders. it will be a stronger runner than the big block

Well..any news is good news at this point. I know its going to be a money pit, thats not really an issue. I just like the fact that, if I put enough work into it, I could have a peppy little towing machine.

Thanks for the cam info. I was about to buy a cam, new rods, lifters, and arms.

mat must of fell on his head ? the 350 from the same year is lower on TQ as for the small cam small heads and TBI yes that may be somethat true. but you are looking to make TQ then you can make with that you have . you can bolt on a set of vorteck heads on the 454 you have if you want . that base engine like you have now can make 330 hp as it was use in marine use with a carb and low plane iron intake .what you have can be made to work . they made better TBI intakes and bigger CFM TBI . HOLLEY soild them . cams are not hard to find as well .if you going to throw some money at it. there many ways to go i would think about running a Carb on it then you can run more cam and tune it in EZ

I'm doing a TBI to carb/intake/MSD dizzy/wires/6A right now & should have it running in a few days ... it's a '87 gmc 3500 & was operating but couldn't pull a greasy string out of a cats ass!

I'll let you know what improvement I end up with.

REGS

Thanks ya'll. Can anyone tell me more about how to make late model vortec heads work? Is it as easy as bolting them on? I wont mind doing a carb setup if needed. 330hp would suit me just fine really if I could make that happen. Like I said, its got 130k on it right now and I'll be rebuilding it around 200k so I have about a year or two.

Thats cool REGS. I'd like to know how that turns out.

I'll post some before, after & my impressions of what & how it turned out. Basically it's an external upgrade IMO. I'll NOT touch the cam or internals ...

It did come from cally with a converter & 1 flowmaster ... a load flowmaster. I picked up 2 used quieter cans to replace the current converter/muffin combo.

REGS

I have to agree with Pat on this one. The stock heads are okay to 4,500 rpm or so, but they are whats really holding you back. If you just want daily light to light grunt then just swap cams and switch to carb. I bought my big block and found that it had peanut port heads too. So I found some 781's from early seventies. If you want it to be a brawler then you need heads and higher compression, cam, etc...