350 s-10 questions

I have a 95 chevy s-10 that i have put alot of time into dealing with local shops who 1/2 know whats going on. As soon as they see its modded its like thier brain turns to moosh. I figured id give you guys a shot at it and see if you could suggest a few things to make it better.
long story short, it used to have a short tail turbo 350 in it and when i changed it to a 700r4 I lost alot of torque. I am planning on installing a set of 373 gears in it this weekend but it just seems to tach out kinda slow. I think the gears will help because as soon as the rear busts loose it tachs out super fast.
I think my carbs out of adj too because when i let a buddy drive it when he floored it I got some of that unburnt fuel smoke and you can smell it.
Anyway here a list of mods.
Any advice is apprieciated.
--- 350 factory roller motor bored .30 over flat top pistons

--- Full crank kit up to the top, Steel crank

--- 1.5 scorpion roller rockers

--- comp cams 276 hydraulic roller cam

--- matching triple valve springs

--- vortec heads

–-- installed a power plus cylcone polished intake mainfold

--- 1 inch carb spacer adapter plate

--- Holley 650 Double Pumper carb

--- fuel pressure regulator

–-- Earls fuel pressure guage

--- Patriot shorty headers

–-- changed the exhaust from the headers it goes into an "X" pipe back to dual into
2 - 40 series flowmasters with dumps at the rear.

--- electric cutouts for the exhaust



--- lokar throttle cable and tranny dip stick

--- 3 inch thick twin core northern radiator

--- 16 inch Flexalite electric fan

--- Electronic thermostat controls for the fan

--- Chrome Pro-form Chevrolet valve covers

--- 14 inch Holley chrome air breather w/ k&n filter

--- Flamethrower hei distributer

--- new red 8mm plug wires and plugs

--- painted the engine bay black and reduced unnessesary wires

--- painted the block and heads Black

---has a 10 bolt 3.42 8.5 rear end (posi unit g80)

--- Replaced transmission with a built 700r4 with corvete servos, ect.

--- new flywheel

--- new 1800 rpm B&M stall converter

--- hurst roll stop ( brake controller)

--- b&m shifter handle with button for line lock system
--- nos sniper 150 shot (not installed on truck yet)

Exterior parts

--- 98 S-10 wheels and new tires

--- Mickey Thompson drag radial slicks

--- Black bug guard for the front of the hood

--- 20% tinted windows

--- custom paint (looks primerish but is actually a new chevy color commonly seen on 2006 suburbans, tahoes, ect.)

Interior parts

--- Ripped out the vinyl bench seat and floor mat (lots of rust hiding under there)

--- Replaced the drivers side floor pan with sheet metal

--- Replaced the drivers side rear seat bolt area with new sheet metal

--- Installed a grey 60/40 cloth bench seat out of another truck

--- Installed new interior door panels

--- Also installed dark grey carpet out of the same vehicle to match

--- Installed a B&M mega shifter in the console area (boot missing in the photo but installed now)

--- re-organized the guages and installed a 5 inch autometer tachometer with a shiftlight

--- Detachable face JVC kd-s30 CD player


Heres couple of pics

 

Ok. You need to find out what the gearing is in the 700R4 you put in the truck, and compare it with the gearing of your old TH350. Then call the tech line of one of the ring gear companies, tell them what trans gears you have, and ask them for some advice on what gear to put in the truck.

Sounds like the 700 was geared a bit different from your TH350, and this has created your problems.Also, are you using a lock-up converter?

One more thing, you mentioned triple valve springs for your motor, do you mean a dual spring with a dampener or do you have true triple valve springs installed?  

What lost torque? I'm not sure what you mean.

The 700R4 has a low gear that is about one full ratio deeper than the TH350, which means there's a lot more torque in low which will make traction more of a problem. Un- fortunately the 700R4 uses the same second gear ratio as the TH350 which means a big jump on the 1-2 shift that greatly lowers engine revs and may make picking up speed in 2nd a problem compared to the TH350. Race guys like to use the 200R4 because it has a better ratio spread between 1 and 2. But it is structurally weaker and takes a lot of rocket science to make it handle high output V-8s. Third in both boxes (TH350 or 700R4)is 1 to 1 but the TH350 will have more available torque in it's high gear of 1 to 1 than the 700R4 in high since its high is 4th gear which is an overdrive that slows the engine down. Therefore, less torque is available from the 700R4 in 4th and the vehicle will be doggy in OD compared to 3rd gear in either the TH350 or the 700R4.

Your selection of increasing final ratio will only make traction a bigger issue in 1st. However, it will brighten up acceleration from 2nd thru 4th.

Traction with the S-10/15 is a big problem both in acceleration and handling. I've built several of these things and have one for myself and they can be downright scary. It takes a lot of work with the suspension and chassis to get these machines to be half way competent handling vehicles. This brings me to your pictures, where I don't see anything hanging below the rear springs. Is there any work here? You can improve handling and braking with Lakewood slapper bars with a notch of preload. The slapper bars will rise up to prevent spring wrap-up on acceleration, but are loose on braking to prevent brake hop. Raising the front spring mount an inch to an inch and a half increases anti-squat which helps keep the rear tires planted. Installing either metal to metal or greasable urethane bushings in all the suspension points will help, this includes the rear spring mounts. Stiff, high pressure shocks all around help a lot. Putting 2 inch spacers behind the wheels to increase track width is helpful. Moving the battery into the bed behind the right rear tire helps traction. A rear anti-sway bar will pull some of the understeer out of the front making the truck a lot more controllable in corners, so will getting rid of un-necessary front end weight like air-conditioning, cast iron manifolds and heads The rear axle needs to be carefully aligned to the transmission. The engine/transmission is typically mounted with a 3 degree downward angle to the rear. The companion flange of the rear axle should meet this with a 3 degree up angle on the U-joint. Standing flat the driveshaft should form a straight line from the rear of the transmission to the axles' companion flange with no angle in either U-joint. Much beyond 3-4 degrees in a U-joint causes the shaft to turn at a different speed than the transmissions' output shaft. Since this can't happen the shaft is forced to bind, snap, accelerate, then bind and go thru this again. This snaps the entire driveline, it's not only hard on parts, but it changes tire speed which changes traction. So you want to do what ever it takes to at least start out with the slip yoke and companion flange facing each other. Then you want to do everything you can to minimize their dynamic excursions to no more than 3-4 degrees.

Your engine sure is pretty and if you’re going to enter this thing in a custom car show it should do well. If you want to race dump the air filter and put a closed cold air package on it, that’s worth 1% more power for every ten degrees you lower the intake temp at the air horn. On a hot day it’s common for the ambient air temp to be 100 degrees cooler than air under the hood, that’s 10% more power for free. Get rid of the polished intake, polished anything is crummy at heat transfer. Rough sand cast aluminum does a better job at keeping the intake mixture cooler. If you have one of those intakes that stands up separate from the valley cover and coolant return passages, it good to polish the side facing the engine to reflect heat and roughen all other surfaces so it rejects heat. Same problem with chrome rocker box covers, they hold the heat in and you want it out. Cast rough aluminum or black painted steel is the way to go. This dumps some top side heat which is good for the valve springs, you need plenty of oil up here to cool those springs, otherwise they’ll have a short life.

Given how this is built and the plan for using laughing gas, I’d surely put an oil cooler on it. This much cam and 3 deep valve springs have really high loadings, no way to avoid that with what you’ve built. High loads between parts like lots of cool oil, cool being something of a misnomer cool is 180 to 200 degrees. Oil runs hotter than coolant temp. Same goes for the transmission, an add on cooler will help it live to deal with all this power. Best coolers are those with a built in fan, for the engine you also want a thermostatically controlled valve that cuts out the cooler when the oil is cold. Too cold oil is just as bad as too hot. The tranny is handled by cooling the oil coming out first, then routing it to the radiator to warm it to the water temp before dumping it back in the gear box.

The rear axle at this power level should have a girdle with adjustable supports to put a little preload on the spool’s bearing caps. This insures you’ll drive home more often than not.  

Bogie  

Thanks for all the advice. I wish Bogie lived next door to me and stopped me as i was chroming everything. lol
Part of my problem is I realized that I dont have vortecs afterall. Apparantly I have whats called Captain Bar heads. TBI style.
I called the local machine shop and they are building me a set of Vortecs. They told me it should a 100 hp or so gain over the heads i have now.
The other issue is the stock stall converter. I am going to put like a 2500-3000 stall in it.
The last thing is i have a set of 373 gears im also putting in.
Well see where it stands after all this.
Bogie is right though. I need to start thinking about some safety parts too.