[mgarblik]

JMO. Pontiac V-8 engines have some weak areas and some design features that are not ideal for high HP, high RPM operation. The crankshafts, although cast iron do not make my top 10 list of things to be concerned about. If they are crack free, (Magnafluxed), straight, ground and polished to size, they rarely break. We successfully ran N cranks in 455's to 1000 HP @ 7200-7500 RPM for years before we could afford billet crankshafts. (Not Recommended).

[Jay S]

Was there even a good forged option back in 2000? I thought the 4340s came a few years later.

In that guys defense, if he is mostly coming from the SBC racing world, SBC’s had Cast, Cast Steel and forged cranks. The cast steel would be closest to a Pontiac, and are less common in SBC’s. When you talk about cast cranks, most SBC folks from the dirt track world will have a knee jerk reaction because they probably broke one of the weaker cranks trying to race it. They pretty much all run I beam rods, using H beams on one of the crappy base cast cranks probably does sound crazy to those guys.

[SRGN]

I've seen a lot of "bulletproof" engine parts destroyed from a bad tune, and a lot of properly tuned "stock junk" that ran the number every weekend. Cranks get killed from RPM and detonation for the most part, if you keep the RPM within reason and cylinder pressure under control parts tend to live a long time. Max effort race engine, sure I'm going to get the best. For a street/strip car without a rollbar, cast crank is more than enough if it's tuned properly.

[Gary H]

In my opinion, for a high performance street engine, factory Pontiac cast crank will be fine. I would not however run an aftermarket cast crank.