[thews]

I own 2 69 350HO convertibles and neither of them have the original engine. One is a 4 speed and one is an automatic. The 4 speed has a 3:55 posi and the automatic has a 2:56 (I think) peg leg. I searched forever to find a 350HO automatic block and came up empty, so I put a 68 400 big car engine in it with 70 RA #62 heads. For the stick car, I found a 350 HO engine in really good shape, but of course it's never going to be "numbers matching" though all the codes will be correct. The 350HO is a niche car. The intent was to get close to a 400 in power for insurance reasons, but keep the lower cubes. With the standard 6, the Sprint 6, the 350 2BBL, 350HO and 400 and Ram air cars, if people wanted go-faster cars they bought the 400, so the 350HO, while rare, is rare for a reason, because the public didn't embrace it.

Let's say you find a 350HO block with not much else. By the time you pony up for all the parts to make it correct, it'll be way more than a 70 400 out of a Grand Prix. My advice is to get the PHS docs (should be interesting), but ditch the 350HO build... it's really not worth it. They made 400 2BBL GTO's, but no one wants them. The 69 350HO is a cool car and is plenty fast (for me anyway), but so is a non-Firebird 400. /2cents