BangShift.com Speed Secrets: Is The 305 Small Block Chevrolet Worth Hopping Up, Or Should You Just Step Up To The 350?

Is bigger always better? In engines looking to make the most power, then yes. But…does that mean you shouldn’t hop up your 305 if you already have one? Or that you should swap out the 305 for a 350? Watch and see this video from Richard Holdener and you can make that decision, but before that we’ll talk about what’s going on here. Let me paint a picture. Lets say you have a 1990 IROC Z Camaro with the factory TPI 305 in it. It made a whopping 210 horsepower, but came wrapped in a super sexy 3rd Gen Camaro body so you were cool even if it had a hard time doing big burnouts. Now lets say you decide it is finally time for more power and that you want to make some big changes. You’ve got money to spend and you decide that you are going to build an engine for this thing. That’s all well and good, but you have a decision to make. Do you build the stock 305 into something special, or go out and find a 350 to build instead.

If ultimate power is your goal, there is no doubt that a 350 is capable of making more than a similarly modified 305. But you have to buy one first, when you already have the 305, that we’ll assume for this example runs fine and isn’t broken. To get yourself a running 350 in the same condition, we’ll assume it will cost you about $500 and the headache of finding one. If heads, cam, and intake cost the same for both, then which one do you go with? Does one respond to these mods better than the other? Do they make the same power per cubic inch? Or does one hammer the other? These answers, and more, are in the video below. Check it out, see what kind of response comes from all this mods, and tell us what you would do.