455 street motor opinions
 

so i picked up a couple motors over the weekend, one being a 71 yc 455.

its standard bore, been vatted, cam bearing installed, honed, new rings and bearings. it came with a rebuilt set of 6x8 heads the bracket master 2 cam i have in the sales section. stock cast pistons reused/rods.

i have 2 options, take it apart and check everything and put back together just to complete it. maybe shave .030 on intake and deck side of the 6x's and possibly use the bm2 cam


or i have 428 crank 20/10...eagle h beams, and a set of 4.150 428 icons i could put in..at that point i dont know that the 6x8s would be a good fit but a helluva short block.

i was trying to get rid of all this pontiac stuff, and now in 2 weeks ive aquired, 1 400 long block, 428 4bolt block, bare 400 block, and 1 455.

Congratulations on thinning out your inventory. LOL

only way i would reuse stock pistons and old bore is if it was my only transportation and it was a weekend build

lol....ikr...im afraid to even open fb marketplace anymore.


the bore didnt bother since it was checked and good, my guess was reall low miles....it is the cast pistons that bug me....and the fact i cant just change to a forged piston without a rebalance

great pickups! I guess you'll have to thin it again next year! ;-)

Factory cast piston 455:

https://forums.maxperformanceinc.com...5&postcount=19

Ain’t nothing wrong with that….. :)

thats exactly what i had in mind for this 455, i dont need it for anything and if it rum good with the parts i have and what came with it. its a win

Stock pontiac pistons are pretty dang tuff
I ran a 69-400 with 50,000 something miles for 13-years.
The last 3-year I sprayed it with 200 shot of nitras.
mind you this was a bone stock motor with a RA4 cam 670 heads
A mallery dual-point and an old torker 1 intake.
It finally spun a bearing butt that thing was tuff.
Stock pistons in a pontiac are pretty strong.

GT

Back in the early 90's when I was 19 or 20 I had the stock short block 455 that was in my 78 TA I rebuilt on a budget, I used a TRW rebuild kit that had cast pistons, stock rebuilt rods, 6x-4 heads milled .030-.040 & a comp magnum 280 cam.... none of it was ideal or followed the popular pontiac builds since I was unaware of all that at the time.

But, I beat the living crap out of that car/engine for the next almost 10 years & 100k+ miles, looking for races day & night, doing john force burnouts all the time, countless 6000+ rpm runs under WOT & everything in between including corners like an auto-x racer... seriously abused the car/engine as a dumb kid.

Point being, after all that abuse the engine still ran great when I sold the car after a few too many fender benders & not having a place to keep it when I moved out on my own. I kept the engine/trans for a future build and when pulled apart everything looked good including the main/rod bearings, sold the cam/lifters to a guy that reused it for many years.

Might be the lighter cast pistons that helped the rods live under those conditions, but after that engine I kinda laugh when everyone says stock rods are weak, yes there are better options today for not much more than rebuilding stock rods, but the stock rods & cast pistons lived under more abuse than the majority of engines will see.

its funny how you forget about the stuff you beat on in the past and it lived, made me think of my stock rebuilt 557 block in hi school with cast pistons/rods/ beat on it for 7 years straight, was running when i took it apart but you could shake the pistons in the bores, was told even if i could take the block to .060 from.030 it stsrted at it still woukd be enough lol

Very young in my automotive career I've learned that a "stock" engine in running condition is better than any basket case " super high performance" engine project.

Back then people got influenced by the various car craft and hot rod magazines, pushing for the latest and greatest intakes, pistons, rods etc... People forgot that it was how magazines made their money, advertising stuff... not from subscriptions.

I saw those mags as entertainment and for inspirations, I loved deep tech articles.

Since people cant read anymore, they are now are influenced by what they see on specialized TV channels and online videos....

Lets not forget how we started ....How much shenanigans we've done with stock engines back in the day.
How much fun we had with barely modified engines no matter the displacement, replacing a 2bbl carb for a quadrajet or holley and we instantly "felt" like we bolted 50hp extra.... set of header or cherrybombs !

I loved spraying the hell out of stock engines and man did they survived way longer than I've thought. Just needed to stay on top of the tune and pull enough timing.

Replacing internals and machine work in engines nowadays is a very expensive game, no wonder everyone and their sister are switching to LS swaps..

Just get the thing running, put new gaskets in and a rattle can paint job, tune it proper and drive it. 455, 428 , 400 , 350 doesnt matter , just enjoy, my friend.

Peter