Over the past year, we assembled two very mild small-blocks aimed at the typical hot-rodder looking for a solid street engine built on a budget. Once both engines were assembled, HOT ROD Editor John McGann suggested we test both to see how they compared, which we thought was a great idea.
In case you missed the buildups on the two engines, the first was the 355ci small-block Chevy using a 1986-and-later one-piece rear-main seal block that we built to replicate the affordable crate engine that Chevrolet used to sell but has discontinued. We upgraded our engine with cast-iron Vortec cylinder heads and more compression in “Modest Mouse” (Nov. ’22).
The LS engine was a slightly different approach.
