Quote:
Originally Posted by gcottingham
It was actually just marketing. There is no difference in the bore or otherwise. Think about the motorcycle market. They always fudge the cc to something that makes sense or keeps up with the competition. The Ford engineers were winning, so GM played a few tricks from year to year while they were in development of better engines. It was easy to fudge from 396 to 402 at a time when they were introducing the 400 small block. Workers on the factory floor were given liberty to liquidate emblems in batches. As long as they were in line with the models produced. There were no ISO standards back then. Just well kept factories.
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This was the way i always understood it. There is a lot of "mystery" surrounding the 396/400/402 engine. I would love to hear if someone actually cracked open a "402" and compared it to a "396" from the year prior. It's easy to input the numbers in a calculator and say the bore should be 4.124 inches compared to the 396 with a bore of 3.094 inches. Consumer consumption was the determining factor in how these engines were badged. I honestly couldn't see Chevrolet boring out all their 396 motors for any reason. They would not have bored out engines, being untested and unchecked just because of flooding. R&D did indeed go into their products before the idea of quick fixing some castings, even during factual problems they had. The flooding stories and casting problems all seem to be myths as everyone knows someone who worked at Chevrolet during the times when records and facts were at their least, and none of the stories coincide. The engines may indeed be different bores, but we will never know the real reasons for sure.... until someones grandfather who was Zora Duntovs best friend personally oversaw the entire operation.
