my first ls swap 1996 2 door Tahoe 4wd 385 Stroker to LQ4 cam headers **pics**

[Paulster2]

wow, a 100 shot? lol. ok, so i was talking a some 75 year old guy, and i guess he was one of the original hot rodders, and i learned A LOT from him- balacne the pistons (i can tell you how), get the lightest valves possible, same with the pushrods and rockers, get springs with just enough tention to close the valve, you want as little tention as possible, port and polish the heads, balance the valves, and where the fuel goes in is a small tube (i think is what he told me) and that needs to be as smooth at possible, so the fuel is more of a mist when it gets in the combustion chamber. he also told me how to rase the compresion, without replaceing the pistons, but thats a huge pain in the but... but that should help to get a few more RWHP, and help the mileage some.

hahaha, our daily driver for 6 months was the 65' olds, 7MPG, it runs on premium gas ONLY, and lead additives... that thing went through SO MUCH gas...

You don't need to do all of this to get 350whp out of a 5.3L LM7 engine. Check this thread here. While 322 is not quite 350, it wouldn't take much more to get you to 350. This is a very street/wallet friendly build.

Another thing with the above statement is: there is a lot more to selecting valve springs than just "get springs with just enough tention to close the valve", as there is such a thing as harmonics. I agree you don't want to get a spring with so much pressure it's overkill, but throwing a general statement out there like that will bring bad results.

[myzterray]

what do you suggest? so far im ordering the schenfeild lt headers. i was talking with someone else as far as the intake because i need to convert from dbw to dbc. so i was planning on changing the intake to a car intake. with the lm7 heads what intake would work well?