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If the only thing holding you back from a GM V8 swap is some sort of social-media-hardened dislike for overhead-valve (OHV, aka pushrod) motor designs, Bring a Trailer may have just the thing for you: a single-overhead-cam-swapped small block Chevy V8. It’s not some oddball motor from a limited-production race car, but a garden-variety 327 with a purpose-built SOHC conversion. Pretty wild, huh?
According to the accompanying Hot Rod article, the upgraded motors were good for 350 horsepower after the cam swap alone—or about the same amount you got from the L84 package engine in 1963, and that was the top-of-the-line engine with mechanical fuel injection. The low-compression (and carbureted) version offered only 250 horses.
Sure, the power’s nice, but there are plenty of other ways to get that from a small-block V8 without performing a lobotomy. Why go through all the trouble then? An overhead-cam engine benefits from a tighter valvetrain package with less reciprocating mass. Pushrods are simple, but they’re long and heavy, and along with the rocker arms, they both contribute a good bit to an OHV engine’s overall parasitic losses and limit their ability to rev higher. The overhead-cam setup eliminates them from the design while also allowing for lighter valve springs, and less mass is always good when you’re trying to make top-end power.
This particular conversion kit was produced by Pete Aardema. If that name rings a bell, that’s because he’s always doing something crazy with internal-combustion engines. Remember the land speed record car we featured a while back with a home-built V12? Yep, same guy. While a conversion kit is certainly less ambitious than a home-built engine, this thing is nonetheless impressive.
It’s effectively a bolt-on upgrade, and it even preserves the factory camshaft to continue functioning as a distributor drive. This could all be done with the heads in place, and all signs point to it being completely reversible. In this case, you get the kit pre-installed on this 1963 Chevrolet 327. And for such a novelty, it’s pacing to go for a bit of a bargain. Those numbers always go up near the auction’s end, of course, but this little bit of obscurity may not necessarily fetch top dollar.
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Byron is one of those weird car people who has never owned an automatic transmission. Born in the DMV but Midwestern at heart, he lives outside of Detroit with his wife, two cats, a Miata, a Wrangler, and a Blackwing.
