All right, all of y'all who can wrap around this one.....it should be easy. Lets say, I propose tearing down a Chevy 305, 350, and a 262 V6, what parts would be interchangable?

Edit: WHOOOOO HOOOO 100 posts!

Edited February 7, 200620 yr by 76ChevyTrucker

Pistons, valves/valve springs, main bearings, pushrods, sparkplugs.... I'm drawing a blank but there has to be more.

OH yeah, a LOT more...think of everything that's on an engine if you pull it out of a vehicle and think of how common those three engines are...then put it together.

well, here's just a few off the top of my head:

motor mounts, flywheel, water pump, harmonic balancer, thermostat, fuel pump (if mechanical), oil filter, oil pump, carb/tbi or fuel injectors, distributor shaft, bearing caps, pulleys, alternator...

The rods would be "interchangable" but this would alter the displacement of the 350/262 if they were from the 305 or vice versa as the stroke is different... and the crank would be interchangable fron the 305-to-350 and V.V.

You pretty much got it with that one Sixty8....now tell me exactly which two cylinders were removed from the 350 block to make the 262/4.3L engine

And oh yeah, answer me this one. Why in the heck did GM decide to "evolve" to the 4.3L and 3.8L V6 engines?

Either #1 + 8 or # 2 + 7... I forget exactly but the siamesed exhaust valves were kitty cornered.

Evolve? ummm.... I'm thinking but nothing is happening.

EDIT: Do you mean for packaging reasons because of the length of the inline sixes?

Edited February 7, 200620 yr by Sixty8panther

Well see, I've always heard two stories about how the 3.8L and 4.3L engines came into being. Story one tells me that GM wanted engines that were as reeliable as the 305 and 350 respectively, but in a 6-cylinder package. Story two tells me that the reliable and powerful 250 and 292 were just too darned old to update, so they bobbed a 305 and 350 block of cylinders 2 and 7 (although some say it's 4 and 6) and ended up with 229 (3.8L) and 262 (4.3L) respectively.

I wouldn't be surprised if the hacked-off 3.8L & 4.3L V6s would be cheaper to produce over the long run because they shared so many innards with the V8s. They might even be able to come down the same assembly line as the V8s?

Not sure, just guessing here.

Didn't the 194/230/250/292s sixes share some parts with the SBC V8s as well (not to mention the 153 CID four)?

Now that one I don't know Neon, I'd have to do some parts checking and crossing (since I do work somewhere where looking at part numbers all day long is my job). I know that the 262 V6 is a 350 with parts missing is because a friend of mine spun a main bearing one day and we tore the bottom end out of it, I had a good main bearing from a 350 and we slapped that one in there and its been running since then. If I remember right, it was at 198,000 when it spun it and now its got near 285,000...still running strong.

I also know that the 229 V6 that Chevrolet built was a 305 with parts missing because I've torn one apart before. I'm not sure how the 231 that we all know now came about but I know that it uses similar pistons to the 229 (I've already checked the part numbers), but I haven't been able to really research it. I guess you could say that the SBC engines were in a sense the first "modular" engines being able to go from a V8 configuration at multiple displacements to a V6 configuration with equally multiple displacements, and everyone says that the Ford 4.2, 4.6, and 5.4 were the first, hah!

I remember reading an article in Motor Trend or one of those magazines about the 153 CID four and 194 six that came out for '62. They made a big deal about how many of the parts were shared with the 283 & 327 V8s (I'm thinking it was rods, pushrods and valves; pistons for those engines were 3.56" so they didn't have an equivalent V8 counterpart. But the 230 and later 250 six had the larger 3.875" bore, which was the same as the 283 V8.