355 Engine Swap

( Mid-July 2009 )

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Sunday Morning, I enter the garage bright and early to discover that the old TH350c still had a little fluid left in it.

Ahhh!! My beautiful nice new clean garage floor has been christened.

After cleaning up my mess, it's time to dismantle the old transmission from the 305, and put the 305 on an engine-stand.


Now with the old motor seperated and on a stand, I began to pull off pieces from the old motor, that I would need on the new motor. (Water pump, Thermostat housing, Block plugs, Fuel Pump, etc ...)

The 355 is almost ready to go in, Ian & I pose with the new motor.

Took a moment to consult the manual and some other literature on torque specs when re-attaching the flexplate.

With the bigger flexplate on the newer styled motors, I had to remove it when I first put the 355 on an engine stand.


After attaching those miscellaneous pieces from the old motor, it's time to attach the new motor to the engine hoist. After removing the engine stand from the new motor, we quickly hook up the newly rebuilt TH350.

After lowering the motor/trans combo into the engine bay, we experienced some troubles lining up the motor mount brackets. We'd both down one side, and the other side would be out.

After about 2 hours of fiddling around, we finally got the motor bolted in.


As we begin to start connecting pieces to the motor, I took a minute to clean up the surfaces of the manifolds as Glenn & Ian attempt to install the distributor.

Just connecting up the sparkplug wires, and doing a once over on the swap.

The engine roars to life ... here I am playing with the fuel, keeping the motor going to warm it up. Finally a picture of the engine compartment with the new motor in it.


Still some little things left to do or go over, some left over bolts and I acquire a nicer looking washer fluid jug which I took a minute to install.

Glenn & Kris came over the next day to give me a hand, setting up the timing and getting the car to run a little nicer. Seemed really shaky, having some fuel issues. Turned out to be the carb, so I quickly switched it with the other Edelbrock carb I had kicking around from my Nova.

To deal with the car running a little hot, I came across a 3-core stock radiator and installed it into the Omega.


As it was recommended to me by Great Rate Transmission, running a 3000 stall will generate some heat, so I've installed an external transmission cooler.

After battling and fighting with the car for almost 2 weeks, the swap is complete. Almost complete, I'm sure they will be some bugs to work out yet ... but the hard part is done!

No more 'Slo-Mega' now .... :)


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