I think he is full of it. My dad built a 383 for his chevelle several years ago (like 15). He drove it for 3 years before he wrecked the chevelle. Then he yanked the engine out of the chevelle and put it in a 70 3/4 ton pickup. He drove that for another year or two and it still had TONS of power. In the truck you really had to be pointed straight when you hit the gas or you ended up right back where you started. He sold the truck to a guy that was going to use it for a farm truck. He put some heavy duty overloads on it and a huge water tank in the bed of it to drive out to the pasture and fill water troughs for his animals. My dad still sees it occasionally driving around their little town and the same guy is still driving it and it is still the same engine. It has to have over 100k miles on it, since my dad put almost 60k on it before he sold it, and this other guy has been driving it for almost 10 years, with a heavy load on it almost constantly.
I don't know about the 377, I've never had any experience with one, but I know that with anything you build, if it is done correctly and you buy good quality parts, you will get a strong, reliable engine.
Obviously though, the way you treat an engine has a lot to do with how long it lasts. I know some people that swear by the 383. I think Summit claims that their kit makes somewhere around 400 hp and 450 ft lbs of torque. That is with headers, a good intake and a 4 barrel carb. That is basically a "stock" 383. If you add a radical cam, a little higher compression, some good heads, a good ignition and a good intake/carb combo you can easily see 500+ hp on pump gas. Its just not a very cheap way to go, but most things that make you go fast are expensive.
Maybe he was talking you into a 377 so you could see how hard it is to find a good SBC 400 block, and then he could sell you one he had laying around or something. Just my 2 cents. I think opinions vary about every engine ever made. Some people have good experiences and some have bad. I heard of a guy that put tons of money into a 350 and built it to run nitrous and blew it up the first time he took it out. I also read in Super chevy I think, where they took a junkyard 350 and put a new cam and carb on it to get it running good. Then they dynoed it stock, with a 50 shot, a 100 shot, etc to see how much juice it could take before it blew. I think at around a 400 shot of nitrous, it finally cracked a piston. A stock, cast piston with unknown number of miles on it. I think that run it dynoed somewhere near 800 hp, on a engine they picked up for $150 from the junkyard. If I remember correctly, it was a 2 bolt main even. So, I think every engine is different, and every builder is different and gets different results.
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