How do you like your gear vendors?
My C20 has a built 406 sbc with a th400 and gear vendors overdrive.
The GV is great and allows me to cruise at 70 mph at 2400 rpm with 4.10 gear and 33" tires. The engine has great torque starting at 2000 rpm and really starts to wake up above 2500rpm and probably peaks at 4500 with a comp 264 roller cam. This truck is my daily driver and is also for towing my 8500 pound toy hauler. The GV gives me 6 gears and makes all the difference. You can't coast downhill or engine brake while in overdrive as it won't lube properly and could burn up. Empty, I will use light throttle or very short periods of coasting and with a load I stay in 3rd down hills, or 2nd with the trailer.
The 6.0 is the way to go. I'm tired of dealing with a carb and the fact that it likely doesn't have an ideal tune for much of my driving. A FI setup would be much better for always getting as much power as possible.
I probably have $6k into my engine with a roller conversion being almost a grand, a forged and precision ground crank, a couple grand into aluminum heads and intake with porting, an hei billet dizzy, then add in headers that were about 600 bucks back in 2001 and all the other crap to match. A magazine article claimed 525 tq from a very similar 406.
Cry once with the electronics, fuel system, and other crap but if I was in the same position, I would go with the 6.0. A small supercharger would be an easy was to make big and reliable power and probably for less money than what I have into the 406.
Diesel is the way to go for torque and I agree that old muscle sounds the best. Diesels can sound good and sometimes be less obnoxious sounding while still sounding mean when you get on it. I hate the sound of the 2005 5.3 chevy trucks. The starter sound is annoying (not like the gear reduction starter on my 406) and the stock exhaust is quiet but also annoying. When the 406 has a flowmaster super 44, it sounded insane and it was also nasty with a 40 series. I can't take that drone anymore and went to a 70 series, which really surprised me. My k5 has a new crate 350 tbi and a 70 series and is quiet and ok sounding. The 406 is night and day difference with the same muffler and while tame, people still can tell it isn't a stock engine.
