If you’re a funny car driver who works at a high performance machine shop and your daily driver truck takes a dump, simply fixing it is not an option. Such was the case with our pal Jon Wall, the lead man at Custom Automotive Machine in Weymouth, Massachusetts and a kid who drives not one, but two different floppers, and soon a third nitromethane powered example! His 2000 Chevy S-10 Xtreme’s 4.3L V6 left some dookie in the sheets and needed to be replaced. 

With the full arsenal of a machine shop at his disposal, Jon could have easily pulled the 4.3 apart, fixed what needed to be fixed, and screwed it all back together. Then again, that would have sucked. Instead of the sucy route, Jon decided to rebuild a Vortec 350 engine and plop it into the truck.

You’ll be happy to know that the engine was bored .030 over, had the crank polished, the rods were resized and received ARP fasteners, a ported set of RHS heads were installed as was an LT4 HOT cam, and 1.6 ratio narrow body rockers. The engine is going to have some snot, not as much as a funny car, but the little truck will be able to turn a tire!

With the engine built, Jon pulled the truck’s front end apart and yanked the dead 4.3. He swapped the accessories over, cleaned up the engine bay, and stuck the V8 into the hole. The current downside is that Jon left the NV3500 5-speed transmission in the truck to get the thing back up and running. He plans to install a T-56 in there because the little 3500 will probably spit the guts out when the skinny pedal starts touching carpet.

We think that the V8 S-10 swap is the modern equivalent of the V8 Vega that became so popular in the 1970s and 1980s. The trucks are small and light, the engine bay can swallow the engine, and with the right chassis tuning, the trucks made a great platform for a drag racer, auto-crosser, or mud bogger if you are a 4×4 guy!

Hit the link below to see Jon’s build thread!

Project Build Thread: Swapping a Vortec 350 into a 2000 Chevy S-10 Xtreme