‘Truck Tech’ Builds a Mean 383 Stroker For a GMT400 Sport Truck
Clean street truck builds are cool. They’re even cooler with a 383 stroker under the hood.
Growing up, we watched a lot of Power Nation shows on Saturday mornings once we graduated from cartoons. Now, those shows are on YouTube, new episodes are released regularly, and we can watch them whenever we want. Isn’t living in 2020 grand?
The truck’s original smallblock was pretty tired. Instead of rebuilding it, the Truck Tech team of Kevin Tetz and Ryan Shand is starting fresh with a newly built 383 stroker short block. A set of Vortec-style heads will live on top, with the whole assembly fed by a FAST EFI system.
The shortblock is a veritable who’s who of high performance. A factory roller cam, four bolt main block was stuffed with Keith Black pistons, slung up and down in their cylinder bores by a Scat crank. Meanwhile, ARP hardware holds everything together. As Tetz states, “A very stout short block with tons of potential.”
The hydraulic roller cam, lifters, and 1.5 roller rockers come from Comp Cams. Heads come from Summit Racing and feature 67cc combustion chambers, along with several improvements over the stock Vortec castings.
Putting engines together is a fun, but tedious exercise. You’re constantly checking and re-checking your work, and progress moves slowly as a result. Watching someone else build an engine is pretty relaxing, though.
Finishing Touches
With the cam installed, timing set, and heads populated with valve springs, pushrods, and rocker arms, the engine is more or less finished. Now, it’s time to clean up a few parts in the media blast cabinet.
Now much of the truck’s original 350 will be re-used, but chipped, flaking valve cover paint and oxidized aluminum accessory brackets won’t look so great with the fresh engine build. After cleaning off the parts, Tetz says “That oxidized, dirty old aluminum comes out looking like new!”
Unfortunately, there’s trouble in paradise. Anyone who has ever installed roller rockers on a small block knows that the stock stamped valve covers aren’t tall enough to clear them. The Truck Tech guys order up a new aluminum set and prepare them for installation by carefully installing breathers.
Finally, it’s time to show off the new fuel injection system. Originally, this truck had a TBI setup that was perfectly adequate for stock use. But as Shand says, “It’s just not that receptive to performance modifications.” Enter the FAST EZ-EFI 2.0 multi-port fuel injection system.
The FAST system is a pretty trick unit that is self-learning and can support up to 550 horsepower. That makes it just about perfect for this application.
While we don’t get to see (or hear) this new engine in the truck, we’re eagerly awaiting the next episode of Truck Tech. Maybe we’ll watch it on Saturday morning with our sugary cereal.
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