73 SD-455 TA to be made road worthy again after sitting since 1979
 

A few people on the forums know that I was able to acquire a 73 red SD-455 TA a little over a year ago. A dear friend was the second owner of the car and it was bought and lived here in Ohio it's entire life. Car has 49,000 miles on it. In the 1978-1979 time frame it was completely disassembled for a complete refresh and to put into what would have been considered show condition at that time. Prior to disassembly, it was treated like a used car, not abused in any way, but not a pampered trailer queen. It was street driven and even raced a couple times at the local drag strips. It is a numbers matching car with lots of documentation and receipts. The car has been apart for 44 years and parts and components have been moved in and out of multiple locations in Ohio and Kentucky during that time. The owner also compiled an impressive stash of mostly NOS parts to put it back together. Few reproduction parts were available 44 years ago so the NOS parts are a blessing.

I am extremely grateful to have a chance to put this car back on the road. I have a plan and will carry it out over the next year or so. The body and paint are good enough to not alter at this time. The endura front bumper may need to be refinished later. I will have a few experts look it over before making any decisions. The interior will need considerable work. The headliner has fallen down, carpet was previously replaced poorly, heater core leaking, some faded hard plastics. So the interior will be a priority.

The heart of the car, the SD-455 engine was rebuilt in 1979 and never reinstalled. I have the receipt from A-Hines Racing Engines in Lawrenceberg, IN. They were a very well respected shop and did top notch work in the 70's-90's before closing at some point. I have completely disassembled the engine for inspection and measurement and find the work they did was very impressive, down to the finest details. Example, I measured the bolt stretch on every rod bolt during disassembly and all fell between .006"-.0075" bolt stretch. Right to specs. The engine is bone stock. But now +.030 with a stock crankshaft balanced and it was ground 10-10.

Purpose for this thread is to highlight the features of the SD-455 engine, provide a bunch of pictures and specs. This engine is a very early build as the heads do not have any casting marks on the outer exhaust ports or any casting dates. Only the complete part number. I have 50 years in this hobby and this is the first real SD-455 I have personally been inside. My hope is we can all learn some things before it is buttoned back up.

Overall time frame is to have the engine back together and painted January/February time frame. Car back together and running June/July 2024. We will see how it goes. Here are a couple of pics to get started and I will add many more as time allows. Enjoy.

Nice!

Thanks for posting.

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Nice! Excellent project.... I wish I had one.

Curious did Hines use the SD455 replacement pistons?

Yes, they are the TRW replacements. They have a number stamped in the head but no oversize stamped. I have a bunch of pics on my phone. I will transfer and post some in the coming days.

Awesome project! Looking forward to seeing the master at work.

Very nice. Looks like that car found its way into the right hands. Can't wait to see it progress.

Do you plan on putting on the dyno? Would be cool to see what a bone stock SD can do.

Wow, what a great car! Will be following this thread.

Wow...that's my dream car right there...congratulations

This is going to be a great build!

If I can get the engine back together on schedule, we can break it in on the engine dyno. I would love to do that considering all the potential oil leaks with Pontiac V-8's. It would need to go on the dyno early Feb. the latest. By mid-late February, student engines will be ready. They take priority over all others. I would need to have a couple head pipes made to fit the dyno but that's no big deal. Point ignition, would only take a couple hours to have ready to run. It would be interesting to see what it makes for stock power. My guess would be around 310-315 HP 430-440 ft. lbs. peak torque. I will try to make it happen.

All I can say is...Wow!!!

Now is the best time to replace that heater corr, while apart.

The ‘71-‘72 455 HO engines with a smaller 068 cam and heads that aren’t as refined as the 455 SD heads were rated at 335 and 300 hp respectively, surely they were making around 350.

I would bet the terribly underrated ‘73-‘74 455 SD engines rated at 310 and 290 hp are actually making 350 to 370 hp. The cam they used is the same profile as the 744 cam, and still they were under-cammed but still less so compared to the 455 HO. We shall see.

Such a nice car, finding one in this condition is a once in a lifetime score. :thumbup:

Thanks for sharing your build with the PY community.

Arnold Hines did my SD455 in my 73 F racecar.

Is it a 4spd car ?
Or are the trans cooler lines just not installed yet

1 of 72
or
1 of 180

73 SuperDuty = :faint:

Very cool!

To add a bit of fun history.....before that car was disassembled, (8) of us friends drove (4) cars to the Street Machine Nationals in Indy.

that '73 SD (auto, BTW)
a '74 red SD auto
Mike's '70 T/A, RA3, 4 speed
my '77 T/A 4 speed with a transplanted '72 455-HO

Good times....

Eric

The car is a low option automatic trans model. Standard interior, AM-FM stereo, 8 track, front console, rear defogger. All important SD engine of course. Hood Bird delete. AC would have been nice for cruising, but I love the open engine bay and the 3.42 rear ratio. I know I am a lucky guy. No way I could let this one get away. Here are a few more pics I was able to get off my phone. You can see the engine is the wrong color. This is one of the things that held up it's completion many years ago.

Beautiful car, I also hope your friend is still with you mgarblik.

I should have included congratulations.

PPG formula number for 1973-74 Pontiac engine blue is 14580 .

Congrats and best wishes on a lengthy ownership .
I was the 2nd owner of a 73 SD Auto AC from 1989-2009 , it was like dating a Hollywood sex symbol. :D

https://forums.maxperformanceinc.com...1&d=1695846884

Nice.
Does completely disassembled mean repainted? Letters look die-cut instead of one piece.

God this brings back memories, my friend Mike dad work at a Pontiac dealer, he ended up with 74 SD Firebird. I was really surprised after going for a ride and comparing it to the power my 68 400 GTO. Made.

Very neat car!

Good traffic on this thread. Before I posted it, I had a few back and forth PM's with B-man about how and where to post this thread. The street section gets allot of traffic so he thought this would be a good place for it. To answer some questions raised. The previous owner lives locally and is helping me with the many details of getting the car back together. He is super detail oriented so his help is appreciated. He does not have the space, tools and time to make it all happen. I am sure that was factored into the eventual transfer of ownership. The car was repainted in the 1980-1982 time frame in lacquer. The body was not separated from the subframe. This was typical of the way cars were "restored" 40+ years ago. I assume rotisseries were out there in the early 80's, but only very valuable "classic's" were treated to that level of restoration in those days. Although a SD-455 TA has always been collectible, they were still available at a reasonable price in the early 1980's. One of the impressive things about this car to me is although many parts have been replaced, 95% of them are NOS replacement parts. There are just a few nick nacks that are from the restoration parts suppliers. This means the parts actually fit and look as they did when the car was built. The car never had any meaningful rust from what I can tell but had some bumps and bruises from being used as transportation for 5 years or so. The decals on the car are NOS replacements in GM envelopes because he gave me numerous spares along with the car. The car does not have the bird hood.

A dream project for many of us here on the forum. Congrats Mike I’m sure you’re loving sinking your teeth into this one!


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I've read here that when the engine was in early stages, that the initial cam choice was the 041? It was nixed in favor of the 068, for emissions purposes (I wonder if the 744 was considered?).

With such a low compression ratio, I'm sure the 068 worked out better.

Have you thought about another cam choice, possibly the 041 with Rhoads lifters, just to allow the engine to b e built as "maybe" as it should have?

The SD uses a special cam because of the gear for the distributor is different than normal Pontiacs.
They originally wanted a bigger cam specs like the RA IV but wouldn't pass emissions, etc. (plus only uses 1.5 rocker ratio)


Do you have the PHS for the SD TA?


What is color of interior?


:confused:

I thought that they did use a cam that had 744 lift and duration but with a different distributor gear?

Actually the SD's ended up with the Pontiac "Y" camshaft. It was essentially the 744 cam with the smaller distributor gear. Not one of Pontiac's greatest efforts IMO, but a decent camshaft. Little lumpy idle. Could use some more lift, even with stock heads. Because of the car's value and probably limited use, I am probably going to just use that cam. I have an NOS one. SD cam cores are hard to find because of the small cam gear. I am sure my friend Tim Goolsby at Ultradyne/Bullet could grind a flat tappet cam that would be just as smooth and make 25-30 more HP. But I am leaning toward leaving this one very stock. It's a delicate trade-off when dealing with a more rare car/engine.

Johnta1: I do have the PHS. It is also in the SD TA registry. It has the standard black interior. It was sold in OH to a smaller northern dealership. Too many pages to post, but happy to supply specific info of interest. It's a Norwood car.

Factory TA decals for these types were one big piece with the letters printed on a big rectangle of clear background. So the background stayed , and was visible around the edges.

On a White car , the excess clear background would become discolored after a while and look crappy.
I removed the 1piece decals from my White car , bought NOS replacements , then "die-cut" the letters out individually myself with good scissors.
And installed them individually.

That is what Ransom is asking about on your TA decals that are on the car.
Do they have a big block of clear background or have they been individualized ?
1piece is Factory - separated is more attractive.

Air dry lacquer paint is the most fragile automotive paint ever created.
Just words of caution and a heads up.
The GM factories baked their lacquer at around 300 degrees to make it more durable.

Good points. I have owned a number of air dry lacquer painted cars. Brittle and delicate for sure. The front bumper on this car will need some attention to look really nice and it hasn't even been driven since painted! Rest of car looks pretty good. A little dull but can be buffed because lacquer is single stage. I will look at the decals. Little details I know nothing about. Makes sense though. On a white car, the clear turning yellow would not look good over time.

Yay - definitely prefer the 73/74's without a bird. Particularly if they were ordered without one to begin with. Keep the pictures and details coming!

Here's an example on a Cameo White car (stolen from the current 74SD auction on BaT);

https://hosting.photobucket.com/imag...nder_Decal.jpg

1973 cam part # 480737 basically the 041. Listed in 1973 service manual.Although I've never seen one.

I do not like base coat-clear coat modern paint on any old muscle car.
Does not look right. All colors are slightly tinted yellow and gets worse over time.
Single stage guy right here.
This car is in the right hands and its going to be a pleasure following this.
Best of luck.

I built what may have been the first rotisserie for our cars in 1987. It was published in Musclecar Review in the November issue that year, after Paul Zazarine had visited my home and saw it as a good tech article with simple plans to build.

The inspiration was a lighter duty version I saw in Street Rodder of the 26-27 T touring body fiberglass molds which looked like 2 engine stands with the bottoms joined in the middle.

Within weeks, there were a couple companies offering them for sale in Hemmings, and one company had the balls to use the photos from the article. PZ had the Dobbs Publishing attorneys issue a "cease and desist" for copyright violation.

Anyway, you've got quite a special car there. Thanks for sharing it with us.

That is interesting information. Seems I remember seeing "rotisserie restorations" for the first time in car ads in the early 90's. That makes sense. BTW, I looked at the stickers on the car and they are a rectangle on a clear back just like the white car pictured. They don't stand out as badly as the white car.

Plans for the next week are to install torque plates on the block and measure the bores. I do not know if the block was plate honed in 1979-80. That was not typical procedure at the time, especially on a Pontiac stock rebuild. It was line honed and has a nice finish. I need to measure the housing bores as well to be sure. Here are some pics of the engine now.

Wow, engine looks superb!!!

No kidding. That is beautiful. Especially the lifter valley.

Around 1976 after I accidentally found that SD block. I bought a 70 F body from local salesman. I wanted to scrap on the tar and road grim underneath but didnt want to lay on my back. So I dissembled the car and made 2 heavy duty T s to bolt to front and back of body. I had made 2 HD engine cranes,learning to weld,lifted body onto the Ts.It worked. It didnt rotate just held the body sideways.Just sat and scrapped. Now I've built a rotisserie. Probably never use it.

Mike, congratulations on getting a great SD! Here’s our experiences with a ’73 SD455. Dan rebuilt my old ’73 SD455 in Dec. 2015 that was a fairly stock rebuild. The bottom end was enhanced with new forged Eagle H-beam rods and .040-over mini-dome Diamond pistons (to get the compression up to 9.4) with the std. ring pack (1/16, 1/16, 3/16), full floating pins, and zero decked with .040 quench. The oil pump was the original 80 lb.-er, so didn’t take advantage of less parasitic hp loss with a 60 lb. pump. The heads were cleaned up with a minimal cut and the chambers measured in at 108 cc’s, new Ferrara 1-pc SS valves and new springs with similar specs to the factory pressures. The original ‘Y’ cam (225/236/115 @ .407”/.407”) and factory lifters were in great shape (46k miles) and reused along the factory 1.5 rocker arms and pushrods. The original cracked factory RA exhaust manifolds were replaced with RARE 2.5 outlet manifolds. The original factory intake manifold and 7043273 Q-jet were reinstalled too.

On a fairly conservative dyno with Pypes 2.5” headpipes (4’ long) the initial pulls started at 390 hp @ 4800 rpm/477 lbft @ 3800 rpm. With jetting and timing tweaks the best numbers were 418 hp @ 5000 rpm/500 ft.lbs @ 3600 rpm, so gains of 28 hp & 23 lbft torque.

We'll be interested to see what a completely factory stock SD455 does on the dyno...guessing 365 hp/465 lbft.

Dennis

Guys just out of curiosity was there any baffling in the valve cover of the SDs for the PCV so it did not suck oil?

Was it sold at a dealership in the Cincy area ?

I'll say. Musta been a great job to be one of the guys hand assembling these things in the Pontiac engine shop.

Another cool feature is the rear cam gear structure. You don't see that every day. (unless you have an SD, or RAV?)


:)

Thought I would answer a couple questions. Skip: SD valve covers are regular production "dripper" covers used on all performance engines beginning in 1971? No baffles in the system. Good friend with a 74 SD reports no oil or smoke ever in the line from valve to the intake. Locomotivebreath: Car was sold at a small dealer in the Marion, OH area. That's around 50 miles north of Columbus. I would have to look up the PHS to get the dealer name. Johnta1: The rear of the block is extensively modified for the dry sump provision and large distributor. Looks like a huge amount of revision was done there. I honestly would love to hear the reasons behind WHY they were so sure all those changes were necessary back there. I have never seen an actual dry sump system as Pontiac intended installed on an SD engine. None pictured on-line either. Don't know how it all would even fit in the bellhousing? All very mysterious. Very cool though.

Mike thanks! I asked because the motor in my 78 the Butler aluminum valley pan sucked oil so I tried one in the valve cover(It has about 15 holes in it for venting, my old KRE had only 3 and did not. Better in the valve cover but was still "fogging for mosquitoes" enough on my test drive a DPS guy pulled me over! Now it just has a breather in the valve cover and no PCV.

This is the factory PCV set up. I think the location of the valve keeps it from sucking oil.

I tried one of the aluminum valley pans with the provision for a PCV valve on an AP block... Even using a baffled grommet it was mosquito abatement.

Very nice Mike. Thanks for sharing.

This oil pump was posted on e-bay some time ago.

Thanks for those pictures. First I have ever seen. So that's the developmental part number on the gear. Would love to get my hands on the blueprints for all the pieces and modifications needed to the rear of the block. Kinda looks like they started with a wet sump pump from the little 1.8L Opel engine they were installing in Sunbirds and other small cars , Brazilian built 1.8L, later enlarged to 2.0L and turbocharged. Very similar style pump.