Its been a bit since i've been on here. Some may recall my sons 66 Buick Wildcat that my son and I installed the FiTech Mean Street EFI on(401 Nailhead). We also converted to small cap HEI, added electric fan(controlled by the FiTech) and added some 18" wheels on the car. The car has been doing good, but it uses oil. Motor has a good bit of blow-by from the valve cover vent. Funny thing is it does not smoke much if any out the tail pipe. Plugs are not oil soaked. The motor runs cool enough during mild days but in this West Texas heat the temp will rise tooling down the interstate. Have not flushed the radiator or anything. The motor seems to run good, but is no powerhouse. Its the original motor and has 97,000 miles on it. Anywho....on to what i wanna do...: I have a 544hp/579Tq 454 Chevy engine and a built TH400 with a Gear Vendors OD unit for it that i was going to put in a 66 Impala i had. Ended up trading the Impala for a 81 Buick Regal with a 800hp 555" BBC in it. So....i have this nice motor and tranny and my sons Wildcat could really use a new drivetrain. So....i'm wanting to swap out the old 401/SP400. Anyone have any experience with swapping a BBC into a Wildcat? I've searched and searched and i'm not finding anything. Surely someone has done it? Or attempted it? I figure the transmission swap should be easy as i believe the TH400 shares the same dimensions as the SP400. I know i'll need to shorten the driveshaft for the Gearvendors OD unit. If the 401 were cheaper to rebuild and if it were capable of much more performance w/o spending a fortune, we would consider going that route. As it is, i have this 454/TH400/Gearvendors OD setup(which i got for extremely cheap) sitting here doing nothing and a Wildcat in want of some go-go juice... Any links or experience with a BBC swap would be MUCH appreciated
I am a little hopeful on that part as some of the Impala's came with big block chevy's and the 66 has steering linkage behind the K-member like the Wildcat does. Thinking i "may" be able to use a pan for an Impala. Was hoping someone had already tried that out. Will of course have to check it out to be sure once i get that far. In the research phase at the moment.
The oil pan thing might be a bigger issue....if that is Gen 5/6 block the pan for the mark 4 block won't fit. And all the gen5/ 6 factory pan stuff is truck/marine/rv/ industrial. So they go from big to bigger.
It will be an Easy swap except the oil pan but that’s not that big of of a deal. There are lots of BBC pan options and you could also have one modified by a fabricator if needed.
