Happy New Year everybody. I may have asked this question before but am now looking into to it more seriously. What do I have to do to my 455 to run big block chev rods-machining, pistons, crank etc. Thanks in advance Royden
BBC rod journals are 2.200", buick 455 journals are 2.250. You'd need to grind the crank .050 off of standard. Standard Chevy rod length is 6.135", aftermarket "Chevy" rods are commonly sold in +.250 (6.385) and +.400, (6.535) but you can get 'em pretty much any length you want if your wallet is deep enough. Buick is, I think, 6.6" I have no idea about rod & bearing widths. It's unlikely they are the same from Chev to Buick.
A common set-up is to use 6.8 inch long eagle bb shevy rods, youwould not want to run the stock shorter big chevy rod. You have to turn the crank down to a 2.2 inch journal, most of us offset gind when we do this to get a little more stroke. The crank rod journal also needs to either be widened slightly for the chevies wider rod bearings, or the rods need to be lightly narrowed to fit the Buick crank journal width. A custom piston is also required due to the different rod length. Jim Burek P.A.E. ENTERPRISES
TA's Sportsman Rods will save you the hastle. All stock dimensions. They are Forged and can support upto 800 HP. They are reasonably priced at $699. They are shown in our What's New Section: http://www.taperformance.com/what's.htm Then scroll down a little ways Dave
Royden I'm with Jim on this. There was some major discussion about this a couple of months back. We generally use eagle rods they come in at around 475 bucks. You can add the extra stroke and get bearings ether race or stock anywhere you are. The T/a rod is a nice piece to just put in if you do not want to mess with stroking the crank.
Thanks for your help guys. I would prefer to go with the Chevy rod so I can get more cubes by stroking slightly although the new TA rods are a nice looking piece.
