Thread: looking for help with 283 build ideas

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What can I say it's a Hot Rod site and the comments above about going with a 350 are true. I can understand wanting to keep the original 283 and retain it's stock appearance however and in the end it all depends on what you want to do and have the truck turn in to.

Because of displacement limitations the little 283 will never be a torque monster but you can help it a bit.

For what you want I would concentrate on building a good solid and reliable short block and then concentrate on the heads, intake, cam, ignition and exhaust.

Chances are you will need to bore the engine just due to wear. The engine likely has a steel crank already but chances are it will also likely need to be turned. Forged pistons and rods at the performance level you’re building is way over-kill so save the money.

Use a set of cast replacement pistons, have the stock rods resized and throw in new rod bolts and call it good. I personally prefer to use a stock pressure, high volume oil pump on small block Chevys but that’s me.

I used a Summit (SUM-1102) .421/.444 278/288 cam on my last 283 build and am pretty happy with the choice for a street motor.

I did upgrade the heads on my 283 as follows:

1965 Power Pack Heads (62cc)
Milled .015
New guides
Hardened exhaust seats
New 1.94 intake valves (upgraded from stock 1.74)
Intake valves deshrouded
New 1.50 Exhaust valves
New Corvette spec valve springs
New Valve keepers
New Rocker Arms (1.5 ratio)
3 angle valve job

Just a side note........as Mike said above this was not cheap so you might want to price it out before you commit to it.

At the level of performance you’re talking about porting/polishing heads and intake is a waste of time, my setup easily turns to 6000+ rpm without it.

I don’t know if there still available, but Dorman offered reproduction Corvette rams horn cast iron exhaust manifolds with 2 ½” outlet that would be a very worthwhile addition and not take away from the originality look.

As far as side pipes, some of the cheaper ones can be pretty restrictive which could be an issue. At a minimum you would want a 2 ¼” to 2 ½” dual exhaust.


At this point I would definitely upgrade the intake. The small base Rochester 2G carb you have probably won’t flow enough to take advantage of what you’ve built. To keep the stock appearance you could change over to the large base Rochester 2G, but because of the difference mounting flange you will need a different intake. To keep the stock appearance an intake from a 327 or 350 2 BBL will work. Your stock Air Cleaner will not fit the large base Rochester so you will need to put that on your parts list too.

Personally I would try to find a factory cast iron AFB intake or go with an aftermarket square flange aftermarket intake (if you go aftermarket make sure it has provisions for the oil fill so you don’t have to change valve covers). At a glance an aftermarket intake painted engine color won’t look out of place.

For ignition the factory single point distributor will work fine but I would have it checked for bushing wear. Personally I would convert it to Pertronix to eliminate the changing points hassle and retain a stock look but again that’s me.

If you’re interested here’s the build thread I did on a 283 I built.

283 Build


The original plan was to put it in early 50’s Chevy but that fell thru so it got a single 4 BBL and ended up in an 87 Ram 50 instead. That truck is closing in on 40,000 miles now and I’m still happy with it.

87 Ram 50 Engine Swap


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