Hot Rod Magazine’s Wild “White Trash” Engine Build

If you’re not a Hot Rod reader, you should be. Often accused of being a Chevy magazine, it is so much more than that. Don’t believe me? I used to work there and I can tell you none of the staffers have a Chevy bias − Chevrolet simply owns the aftermarket and makes it easy to built things on the cheap, especially considering parts are so plentiful. So, yeah, I realize my words ring hollow considering GM Authority is featuring this “White Trash” small-block engine build, but there’s always great things going on at the magazine.

With the White Trash engine build, Hot Rod was determined to find out if the current manner in which “rat rods and straight-axle nosebleeders motivated by leftover small-blocks stacked with tunnel-rams, zoomie headers, and other conglomerations of seemingly mismatched speed parts” works fine or ends up hurting performance. 

Starting with a 1991 Chevy L05 350 TBI from a truck (which was rated at 190-210 horsepower back in those lean days), Freiburger and Co. dismantled the block, painted it white, then built it up using a rumpity-rump cam and other items found through Craigslist because the goal was to keep the cost low.

After dynoing the motor, Hot Rod added a tunnel-ram and twin Holleys. A return to the dyno yielded marginal results. But with these types of cars, a lot of it is show more than go, so that’s alright. Adding Cherry Bombs cut horsepower ever so slightly, and adding zoomies cut it a little more. The conclusion? Visit HotRod.com to find out.