[Ben M.]

So, I bought this car that came with a 455 that hadn't run in over 10 years due to a "rod knock" that it supposedly had. I cranked it over by hand when the heads were on it and it had compression on all 8 cylinders. I pulled the heads off and it appears that it was recently rebuilt before it was parked as the cylinders were in great shape with no ridge. While cranking it with no heads on it, it turns nice and smooth, and when you rock it back and forth it makes zero noise like a bad rod, and when I wiggle any of the rods they are solid as a rock on the crank. So I tore the bottom end apart today and found that of all 8 cylinders, 1 (#8) has 1 pit on it near the oil hole and another (the #1) has a few more pits as evidenced in the photo:



The crank is beautiful, no score marks or anything and it looks really clean and nice. The rest of the rods are all in great shape too and no marks or scoring, plenty of oil on them.

So, question is, would this cause a "rod knock" that someone who knows nothing about cars might call it? Or would this not be an issue at all? I'm curious if this one just has a few pits due to sitting for so long. Could I just toss another set of bearings in it and put it back together? Obviously a full tear down and polish of the crank, etc would be in order but we're on a budget here and there's no point in doing work that doesn't need to be.

The part number on the bearing is 11555 and nothing else, so I have no idea what size these bearings are.